Free Verse

From morning’ s mouth
the bones emerge,
a prayer is whispered
over rounded horns;
the prairie is beyond
the quivering hump
and holy smoke sparkles
released in the breath.
Braided sweetgrass,
be about their hooves;
although the grip of hunger
lies heavy on the land,
let endless native grasses grow
among the yellow stones
and between the stars.
Even if only one man had
begun to sing, actually
it was thousands, She who came
to Wisconsin farmers
and transformed their lives,

1.

In the land of milk and cream delivered early
and daily, and always in glass bottles, we care
about good grooming and, of course, news
of slurs and curs... Can it really be that home

becomes a place to be stranded?
“I don’t see a single storm cloud
anywhere in the sky, but I can sure smell rain,”
out on the edge of Crawfordsville, Indiana,
where the answers and questions become identical
as evil twins.

You hear the roadhouse before you see it,
Its four-beat country tunes
Amplified like surf through the woods,
Silencing bullfrog and red-tailed hawk,
Setting beards of moss dancing
On dim, indeterminate trees
That border two-lane blacktop.
Docked tonight, you reveal the badge
Of the farmer, that blanched expanse of skin
Where cap shades face, babyhood

Each could picture probably
with great care his brother drawing
the corded string of a watered silk bag
and mumbling to Basho above the keepsake
pay your respects to mother's white hair
now your eyebrows look a little white too
but all have turned instead to watch this child
a girl my daughter Simone
an astute migrant
skimming the stream of days
toted wherever she wants

Now that everything seems so persuasive
you will go on changingas always
it has always been the case with you
whether you knew it or notever since
that morning in the swampthat Sunday
a sunless windy morningwhen

After his ham & cheese in the drape factory cafeteria,
having slipped by the bald shipping foreman
to ride a rattling elevator to the attic
where doves flicker into the massive eaves
and where piled boxes of out-of-style
cotton and lace won’t ever be
decorating anyone’s sun parlor windows.
Having dozed off in that hideout he fixed
between five four-by-six cardboard storage cartons

and hue

to have unheld a scale —

silver dishes little mirrors on their chains —

they go that way, This

and hoist

It’s not like looking into a pool,
to let your intelligence run away with you

Come back quarter size, apricot moon

A changeling is a child who
appeared under cover
of the ordinary, in exchange

Be precise
authority is magic.
When you think you've got it straight
wax wane declination
feel the movement under your hand
one summer morning
as you observe it set
then rise that night.
Always use a well-sharpened pencil
followed by a good eraser.
Watch the white emerge.

Someone said
that working through difficult equations
was like walking
in a pure and beautiful landscape –
the numbers glowing
like works of art.
And in the same crowded room
a woman I thought I didn’t like
was singing to herself –
talking and listening

Among other things,
thanks for explaining
how the generous death
of old trees
forms
the red powdered floor
of the forest.