The present that you gave me months ago
is still unopened by our bed,
sealed in its rich blue paper and bright bow.
I’ ve even left the card unread
and kept the ribbon knotted tight.
Why needlessly unfold and bring to light
the elegant contrivances that hide
the costly secret waiting still inside?
I
From the false summit, coxcomb-cum-arête,
cool thermals underscore our frailties,
past edges where our wingless feet are set
and the long look down dilutes the evergreens.
As sandstone ends, the world of ghosts begins —
they sometimes rise up still in dreams, my love.
With one hand firm, I step onto the skin
of the abyss, embracing what’ s above
and severing spent ties to the scree below.
The filtered light turns lichen eerie green,
ushering in a world we hardly know,
I’ ll fly off to a fjord in Norway,
post “Oh the pain” above my doorway
if you insist on going your way,
for this is not a duck.
That is what cowards say, and realists
who run away, shun the appeal its
rare white fur holds, although they feel it’ s
a rabbit full of pluck.
Let’ s multiply, let’ s twitch our noses,
let’ s walk among the night’ s dark roses,
though where the oldest story goes is
a place where tongues might cluck.
Mauve mist-shadow cloaks the sky’ s
River-blurred, inchoate border.
Dawn’ s old story; and light tries —
Not the last time — to devise
Lasting order;
From first principles assigns
Laws to frame day’ s jurisdiction;
Drawing contours, shapes, and lines
From the nebula, it shines,
Strange as fiction.
It hangs on its
stem like a plum
at the edge of a
darkening thicket.
It’ s swelling and
blushing and ripe
and I reach out a
hand to pick it
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).
I spit my smack,
Jim slugs his Jack,
Rob stews his lack,
Carey prepares his rack,
herons hunker on blowdowns,
deer wait on high moon for their rounds,
and the campfire
might as well be an empire
we all
watch dissolve
(in the slough, a carp roll, a splash)
into ash.
You don’ t need a machine to do that.
A plastic bag will do. But he built it,
his tools cast about in the unit
while he got up his nerve to use it.
Nothing more was stored there.
A poured cement floor, a triple-locked door
after door after door down a corridor
reeking with the odor of everything over.
In heretofore phrases, he left a note
outlining his Help! in argot
so wrought it was hopeless to ferret out
his intent, meant or not.
Groping along the tunnel, step by step,
He winked his prying torch with patching glare
From side to side, and sniffed the unwholesome air.
Tins, boxes, bottles, shapes and too vague to know;
A mirror smashed, the mattress from a bed;
And he, exploring fifty feet below
The rosy gloom of battle overhead.
Such green, such green,
this apple-, pea- and celadon,
this emerald and pine and lime
unsheathed to make
a miser weep, to make his puny
bunions shrink; these seas
and seas of peony, these showy
tons of rose
to urge a musted monk disrobe,
an eremitic nun unfold;
such breathy, breathy moth
and wasp, such gleeful,
greedy bee to bid
the bully hearts of cops
and bosses sob,
to tell a stubby root unstub, a rusted
hinge unrust, the slug unsalt;
to stir the fusted
