You bring a stalk of bamboo
to the flu room.
Hot pink Buddha offers
some bullet-like pills from his plastic
fingers. Oh high above the pecan
tree, my dead grandfather
walks Basil and Maestro, our two
standard poodles. One’ s beard is oily
from the wheel
of brie he’ s stolen from
the kitchen counter.
I KNELT down as I poured my spirit forth by that gray gate,
In the fulness of my gratitude and with a joy sedate;
Alone on that wild heath I stood, and offered up apart
The frankincense of love that, fount-like, gushed from my deep heart.
And while I breathed that thankfulness, and felt its holy glow,
And my heart gathered gladness in its calm and equal flow,
While the sun shone within me, and the air elastic played,
And to and fro the wheat-field like the wavy ocean swayed;
I have been cherish’ d and forgiven
By many tender-hearted,
’ Twas for the sake of one in Heaven
Of him that is departed.
Because I bear my Father’ s name
I am not quite despised,
My little legacy of fame
I’ ve not yet realized.
The cold earth slept below;
Above the cold sky shone;
And all around,
With a chilling sound,
From caves of ice and fields of snow
The breath of night like death did flow
Beneath the sinking moon.
Nothing worth noting
except an Andromeda
with quadrangular shoots —
the boots
of the people
wet inside: they must swim
to church thru the floods
or be taxed — the blossoms
from the bosoms
of the leaves
*
Fog-thick morning —
I see only
where I now walk. I carry
my clarity
with me.
*
Hear
where her snow-grave is
the You
ah you
of mourning doves
Each morning in the little white cabin
by the river they woke to a raccoon
clawing under the floorboards or banging
in the wood stove. They did not discuss this.
Instead they said it was a perfect day
to pick blueberries on the hill, or that
a hike to the old glassworks sounded good.
What is the structure of lips
That take care of sounds,
That can scream loud and long,
That can wait and be silent?
Yesterday I was mastering words
And kissing lips lightly —
Their loving weakness
Now remains on my own
Hardworking lips,
Exacting, as if forever,
My terrible punishment.
Listen. Put on morning.
Waken into falling light.
A man’ s imagining
Suddenly may inherit
The handclapping centuries
Of his one minute on earth.
And hear the virgin juries
Talk with his own breath
To the corner boys of his street.
And hear the Black Maria
Searching the town at night.
And hear the playropes caa
The sister Mary in.
And hear Willie and Davie
Among bracken of Narnain
Sing in a mist heavy
With myrtle and listeners.
And hear the higher town
Weep a petition of fears
You wept in your mother's arms
and I knew that from then on
I was to forget myself.
O you gods, you long-limbed animals, you
astride the sea and you unhammocked
in the cyprus grove and you with your hair
full of horses, please. My thoughts have turned
from the savor of plums to the merits
of pity — touch and interrupt me,
chasten me with waking, humble me
for wonder again. Seed god and husk god,
god of the open palm, you know me, you
know my mettle. See, my wrists are small.
O you, with glass-colored wind at your call
and you, whose voice is soft as a turned page,
