When I read about the garden
designed to bloom only white flowers,
I think about the Spanish friar who saw one
of my grandmothers, two hundred years
removed, and fucked her. If you look
at the word colony far enough, you see it
traveling back to the Latin
of inhabit, till, and cultivate. Words
This sunlight on snow.
This decrescendo
of covered stumps & brush —
stop for it.
Stop before the sled end-
over-ends down
the chin of the hill —
the way it always will
at the rock ⅔ of the way down.
Stop & shiver in it: the ring
of snow inside gloves,
the cusp of red forehead
like a sun just waiting to top
the hill. Every ill-built
I can’ t swim because I can’ t fit
into the water
I am
two million feet tall
but thank you for inviting me
I am standing in line
inside my giant shirt
If someone wanted to weaponize me
they would tell me to lie down on New York
and the city I destroyed
would hurt me back
I eat stars
It’ s a riot
I know
my big mouth
full of their light
Every tripod-
toting birder
knows it never
nests on urban
girders. Even
fences set its
scalded-crimson
head askew, its
waddle swinging,
wings akimbo.
Few have got it
on their lists and
fewer still have
caught it singing,
this endangered
North American
candor, cousin
of the done-in
dodo, big-eyed
Big Sur tremor-
tenor — only
ten or twenty
hang glide over
Modoc County,
I. e., the kind of verse
That doesn’ t try to force
People to their knees
(Seeing as it sees
To people’ s being thrown
By forces of their own).
Of all living monuments has the fewest
facts attached to it, they slide right off
its surface, no Lincoln lap for them to sit
on and no horse to be astride. Here is what
I know for sure:
On my birthday
A crow guffaws, dirty man throwing the punch of his
one joke. And now, nearer, a murder
answers, chortling from the pale hill’ s brow.
From under my lashes’ wings they stretch
clawed feet. There the unflappable years
perch and stare. When I squint, when I
grin, my new old face nearly hops
off my old new face. Considering what’ s flown,
what might yet fly, I lean my chin
on the palm where my half-cashed fortune lies.
I was passionate,
filled with longing,
I searched
far and wide.
But the day
that the Truthful One
found me,
I was at home.
The great sea
frees me, moves me,
as a strong river carries a weed.
Earth and her strong winds
move me, take me away,
and my soul is swept up in joy.
O my Lord,
if I worship you
from fear of hell, burn me in hell.
If I worship you
from hope of Paradise, bar me from its gates.
But if I worship you
for yourself alone, grant me then the beauty of your Face.
