The truck grinds by
and pumps out grit;
the road glints and
goes still.
The barn owl that
had not finished here
returns. But with
its fill
of scavenges,
face ruffled in mulch,
the vole is lost
and safe
so the silent specter
flits away, its
moon face to
the moon
and rears unknown
against a copse,
claws tipped for
the strafe
and something dies
too soon.
He filled her between
the hay bales in
that Dutch barn, now
abandoned,
We wash up side by side
to find each other
in the speakable world,
and, lulled into sense,
inhabit our landscape;
the curve
of that chair draped
with your shirt;
my glass of water
seeded overnight with air.
After this bed
there’ ll be another,
so we’ ll roll
and keep rolling
until one of us
will roll alone and try to roll
the other back — a trick
no one’ s yet pulled off —
and it’ ll be
as if I dreamed you, dear,
Only this boy moves
between the runes of trees
on his tricycle
when an eagle swoops,
releases two arrows
from its silver wings, and melts
away faster than lightning.
Then a loud whistle
and a bang like dry thunder.
In a blink the boy sees
his house roof sink.
Feels his ears ripped off.
The blast puffs up a fawn smoke
bigger than a mountain cloud.
The slow begonias rattle
their scarlet like confetti.
Metal slashes
the trees and ricochets.
Wires and pipes snap
One way to draw France is in scallops:
Dunkirk to Brest,
Brest to Saint-Jean-de-Luz,
The imperceptible stone sag
of certain dolmens
over the Pyrenees between Saint-Jean
& Banyuls-sur-Mer
Then, to Nice
Nice, skirting the Alps to Lauterbourg
From Lauterbourg back
to where you began
For the meticulous,
the additions of Cherbourg, Toulon, &
even Le Havre,
Maybe Givet
Yours is a green diorama
It contains several kilowatts of sun,
a superabundance of flowers
There are eyes, glasses even, but still he can’ t see
what the world sees seeing him.
They know an image of him they themselves created.
He knows his own: fine-lined from foot to finger,
each limb adjusted, because it’ s had to,
to achieve finally flight —
I
here I’ m here I’ m here I’ m
here here here here cricket
pulse — the katydidic tick
(and then a pause) tick
(and then a pause) in greening trees — tales
of a gratitude for water, the hollyhock’ s
trumpet Yes, Tenderness
her glove and hoe — her bad trip
love/grief, her medic tent
talking me down, kissed fissures
in the world’ s despair, what I’ d
loved — alive for a while — a day called
Rip and Brood, a day called
Glorious Hour, the long hunt and the worm found
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.
I like to lie with you wordless
on black cloud rooft beach
in late june 5 o’ clock tempest
on clump weed bed with sand
fitting your contours like tailor made
and I like to wash my summer brown face
in north cold hudson rapids
with octagon soap
knees niched in steamy rocks
where last night’ s frog stared
at our buddhist sleep
but most of all I like to see
the morning happen...
Immersed
we don’ t
ask
who entered
whose stream.
Take
my hand there
is no
line no
bridge only
fond
foolishness —
the bread
crumbs I
bring you
in
morning —
they float
on the
surface
water with
two
violins
un-
strung like
the silent
song
on your
lips soft
as the
same
hands I
crushed to
keep
you from
death.
She dances only in her necklace,
scotch-lit surely. He touches his glasses.
Nightie-less, dugs whipping, hair sprung,
some music inside, out, wet tongue
tip at her lip, no mere palsied shuffle,
both bony feet lifted, elbows awful.
Shakespeare’ s banshee of wailing parts,
a woman with hair, a woman with warts.
He’ s fixed to the floor. Dear Heloise:
do other presumed-sane mothers do this —
wait in the dark after the ball
to strip for their sons at the end of the hall?
