rings diminish, duck reflects flight then threads off
Long branch of land, rusted oaks smoldering
fawn shore, grasses bare scripts of green
black fingerbones of the willows, splayed
rubric fringe of the reeds at the edge of water
The reflection is its own blurred dream
The blended edges, furred thing
tawny path of stalks brushed into gray slope behind
Bright yellow mostly gone now, the dominance
The shelter of it carved, caved
Across the river, the park and the little Ferris wheel
closed down
The great oaks emptying, russet, gusseted
the hovering slant light leaking from the outer edge
of cloud bed
leads and shawls pulled forth
Thy synchrony of the lost elements recovered
the shivering water surfaces, planar unmeldings, remeldings,
riverine alchemies, unlocketed selves
now the reemergence, the sun pouring global gold
stripped batting of cloud
glimpsed ligaments
dusk coming up under
lithographic, nib-hatchings
instruments click
the fine-sprung locust
replicate dinge along hill-lines
tailings of umber, the rust smudge
There is still that hemmed ocean of oaks
the various reds, the somehow
silver cast over the brown-gold
Before I was born, I saw a tissue of ingenious detours, an inextricable tangle
wreathed with mistake.
Perhaps the ghost does not limp away, but rather forests flee me, frightened.
Look, they are setting a place for loss, clearing the table for the first glow of
antiquity.
Here we see William T. Walters in his little library illuminated, carefully
smoothing the lip of the continent.
What form bounds forward from behind but The Atlantic Railroad Coastline Co.?
The whole Roman Empire was sold by ascending auction in 193 A. D.
Perhaps the universe is an extinguished building
with blue banners strung along
and the forest, more like a commodity
bordering bushes and asphalt,
something else to string our blue banners on.
Never was restoration swifter:
the leafless trees, the asphalt
less splintered and more splendid.
Never was restoration swifter
with its mightier solutions,
less splintered and more splendid
snipers, dynamiters, colorful bombs.
The mower flipped it belly up,
a baby garter less than a foot long,
dull green with a single sharp
stripe of pale manila down its back,
same color as the underside
which was cut in two places,
a loop of intestine poking out.
It wouldn't live,
so I ran the blades over it again,
and cut it again but didn’ t kill it,
and again and then again,
a cloud of two-cycle fuel smoke
on me like a swarm of bees.
It took so long
my mind had time to spiral
back to the graveyard
On the first warm day,
the aides fret about his pate,
fetch his hat. I push him
out the automatic doors
into the pallid sun.
Dad thinks we should
stay put until all the Indians
are back in their tepees,
but right now he’ s off to teach
a Latin class. Where are his keys?
They’ re a few miles away,
in the past, where he’ s no longer
active in the community.
I steer him along the asphalt paths
of the grounds: bark mulch,
first green shoots,
puddle of coffee by a car.
I like to think about the monastery
as I’ m falling asleep, so that it comes
and goes in my mind like a screen saver.
I conjure the lake of the zendo,
rows of dark boats still unless
someone coughs or otherwise
ripples the calm.
I can hear the four AM slipperiness
The first night at the monastery,
a moth lit on my sleeve by firelight,
long after the first frost.
A short stick of incense burns
thirty minutes, fresh thread of pine
rising through the old pine of the hours.
Summer is trapped under the thin
glass on the brook, making
the sound of an emptying bottle.
Before the long silence,
the monks make a long soft rustling,
adjusting their robes.
The noise throws down
twin shadows, hunting shadows
on a black joy ride.
They roar up the silver vein of the river
and out over the stony peaks,
which have been shrunken to a luminous
green musculature on the screens.
Who are the pilots, too high to see
the splayed hearts of deer tracks
under the apple trees, or smell
the cider in the fallen fruit?
Who are the vandals that ransack
the wilderness of clouds?
