Nature

Moon Festival

Lovers holding pits in their mouths
make vows and delight in each other
till the underwater infant
periscopes his parents
and is born

an uninvited guest knocks at my
door, determined to go deep
into the interior of things

the trees applaud

wait a minute, the full moon
and this plan are making me nervous
my hand fluttering
over the obscure implications of the letter
let me sit in the dark
a while longer, like
sitting on a friend's heart

The Snail

Wise emblem of our politic world,
Sage snail, within thine own self curl’ d;
Instruct me softly to make haste,
Whilst these my feet go slowly fast.

Compendious snail! thou seem’ st to me,
Large Euclid’ s strict epitome;
And in each diagram dost fling
Thee from the point unto the ring;
A figure now triangular,
An oval now, and now a square;
And then a serpentine dost crawl,
Now a straight line, now crook’ d, now all.

Realism

The smashed weirdness of the raving cadenzas of God
Takes over all of a sudden
In our time. It speaks through the voices of talk show moderators.

It tells us in a ringing anthem, like heavenly hosts uplifted,
That the rhapsody of the pastoral is out to lunch.
We can take it from there.

We can take it to Easy Street.
But when things get tough on Easy Street
What then? Is it time for realism?

And who are these guys on the bus
Who glide in golden hats past us
On their way to Kansas City?

Sounding Chinese at Inspiration Point

Nice spring day off big white cloud
At Inspiration Point escaping time wars
Poet takes book & wine bottle up into Mist Mountains

Since only available agenda is rhyming with silence
Seeking window of opportunity on a wall
I disguise what I have to say by sounding Chinese

Such as stars are now darker and farther away
They take deeper drinks because space is
Drying out afraid to think own thoughts

Granted

As I saw your face nearing
my face, snow fell through
a keyhole and opened the door.
We went inside and watched
windows wax green and gold.
Spring, we decided, was more
oppressive than winter with
its alyssum and clover
and the sheer weight of life
crowding us off the page.
We stayed in bed for years
and took our cures patiently
from each other’ s cups.
We read Bleak House and
stored our money in socks.
Nothing opened as we did.

Follow

Follow where all is. / Follow the transfused. / Follow what is still and what is still-attracting.

That light / That beauty / That love / That, that is massy-borne and rising up, like a drifting star.

Like stars lift. / Like lifting stars. / Like the lifting of stars, I rose. I rise.

Rose. Rose. Like a thing beyond words: satiated.

Let lie in the ravage. / Let lie in what is ravaged-wrought.

Why fear what hasn’ t become?

I beckon, like light. / Like a star, I will beckon. / You will oblige. / You will lend the want. You will eclipse my blinding.

The Duck Shit at Clarion Creek

We liked to stick it in a bb gun and shoot it.
We tattooed with it. We said hallelujah,
the poor man’ s tanning lotion.
Then the frack wells began, something black
capping the water and we got high
watching a green-backed heron die.
We got funny at Clarion, flung
each other’ s underwear into the trees.
Why was it we got naked there
and nowhere else? Maybe we knew
we were getting good and ugly, rusted inside
as the trucks we rode into the water.
Maybe we knew we only appeared

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