Late May

Now the mock orange sprawls in white blossom
over the white fence collar, leaning at ease, unshaven:
the June rain has not yet imposed its punishment
for extravagant foliation and flower. It will come

– or not, as the new gods ordain. Once I knew
the weather in the seeds of my bones: not now.
now there are steps missing, as I trip downstairs
to death’s cluttered basement: whoops! I land

too hard amid the unfinished projects, a jolt,
a hint of whiplash. Too soon! But it’s always like that,
I guess, so the old books say. Nobody says:
“Oh! Death! Right on time, I was expecting you!”

Wheel, wheel, old gray sky, wheel over my head,
ask for one more day of daily bread,
my intercessor, my old protector,
my forgiver and my inspector,
wheel once more: and then to bed.

A Compost Prayer

The knotted candyflower and the bleeding hearts
were supposed to like the shade: perversely
they are flourishing now in the bright sun
around the trunk of the cut down maple;
a surging lace skirt for the dragon lilies.
Nothing is as it was supposed to be, this year.
The lilies lift their horns, and their throats
are thick with flies. Here is the garden
where all our sins are remembered, where
all the embers are numbered, where the fires
join hands and sing across the Gorge: a canticle
for rain forests that were never meant to burn.
Well. Lift the black target of the compost bin,
upend the glass pan. Down falls the onion skin,
the flakes of garlic paper,
the potato that rotted on the shelf.
Down roll peels of bananas and oranges
from Costa Rica; the bamboo sleeves of
coffee grounds from the Eje Cafetero:
nymph, in thy orisons be all my words forgot.

April

Dear Prudence, sings a man who left before me
won’t you come out to play?

Fitting Lego bits together, left in a cryptic lay
by a little girl whose intensity puts us all to shame;

April takes stained awnings in its jaws
and puppy-shakes the house until it rattles in its frame.

You thought maybe an simple life would rise before you:
it won’t: we’re only here

to change the guard. We have no use
for captains who can’t steer,

or gold braid, or teachers’ pets: dear Prudence,
won’t you come out to play?

Already Spring

already spring is the little death of fall:
the wind brushes the tulip tree
with the back of its hand
and a clutch of petals falls,
falls, 

irremediably.

Taking and Sending

The woman is old, nearly as old as I;
Her tongue working and making of her pleasant face
A monkey’s, moaning for the roll of deities to cease,
For the floor to hold still, for Death to open his hands:
I breathe in the fear and the confusion, I breathe out

Light and warmth, pouring from Those behind me
Whom I may not turn and see: breathe in the fear,
Breathe out the light. Give it all away. Every scrap
Of comfort. It was never mine to hold. It is not my peace.

There are others. A Protector, of sorts: dull gray.
Strangely impassible in this world of easy translucencies,
Porosities, She is up and to my right. I am forbidden
To Take and Send with her. All right. But in the corner,

That still heap of blankets (she put on her mask and pulled
The covers over at the outset, like a child, going to sleep):
A brightness has been growing there, a hidden light,
An unguessed generosity. Unto us a child is born

Again, and again. (Do you not understand?
You do not understand. Again, then. How many children
Must be born? All of them.) I contract to a tiny blue
Light, about to close its eye, to let its last ley lines fade:
The monkey’s face is mine, for a moment, and is gone.

The Dreams of Rabbits, Sleeping in my Hands

Oh Sir, I said, I have grown old dwelling in this hanker
And my hands are so empty and dry that the rabbits
Mistake them for husks, and try to build their nests in them.
Did you not say you would anoint us with the lymph of gods,
And wash us with fragrant oils, and wake us when the morning came?
He said, and how do you know that the rabbits are wrong? What did you think
They would look like, in this false and garish sun? The rabbits run
When they can, and so must you. Did you think I made a world
Without wolves? But Sir, I said, under this lamp we grow old so fast
Our nails crust with strange growths, we dig and strike sheets
Of rotten plastic in the earth. Can we ever plant or harvest here?
He laughed at me and said, so you thought I was kidding about death?
Now the seedbed of stars itself is crossed with crawling sabandijas
And night is a neon advertisement: what have you ever planted
But your own ruin? If you want to sleep, then wear yourself out with work;
If you want to work, then sleep till morning comes. What else can I say?
I have one vessel more, and I will break it open when the time comes.
But you have made their bed: now let them lie in it: dreams will come,
And you must read them as you can.

Nor Elephant Nor Cat

Indra’s elephant, pure white,
Has three heads, six tusks,
Except some say ten tusks,
One for each direction
(Eight, you know, plus Up and Down)
But I think it more suitable to give him
Two tusks per head, plus
A unicorn on his middle head
Threatening to split heaven, giving us
The pleasing number of seven
Cornamenta. Then picture
Indra’s famous net, flung
And settling over all that
Beautiful and deadly ivory,
Carelessly yet just so, shrugged
Back like the shawl
Of a model on the catwalk.
Elephants are not cats, except
Some say that they are: it’s just
The speed at which you perceive them
That varies, and which end
You start from. (Don’t try this at home.)
Each jewel would burn our flesh, we
Being neither elephant nor cat,
Altogether unhorned, and
Of minimal dignity; still we are
Invited to this party, slower than the cat,
Faster than the elephant, and subject
To sunburn and ulcer as we are;
Our job apparently to sing, or maybe
To clown: the instructions
Are unclear.

September Comes Anyway

Drinking air in long
sweet drafts. O God, I thought
maybe I was done, I am not done,
the light is breaking over me in waves.
I am not done. I am not real:
of course not. An orange seed
is not an orange tree, let alone
an orange grove, where the girls
do their washing and hear the mill wheel turn.
But there are glancing lights everywhere.
Dilations and contractions. God,
I can be so stupid,
am so stupid, most of the time;
but September comes anyway.

New Year's Day

Sly the winds that wrap around
flew the tremor underfoot
scree the love that shifts and shoots
and all these things forgotten.

Tell me, of all the prophecies you've made,
how many came to pass? You are doing nothing
but chewing the chalk of your old classroom,
laboring over lessons too well learned.
How wrong do your masters have to prove
before you give them up?

Stutter and rattle of flags in the wind, and
rotten cloth tears from the pole;
older than we hoped
and younger than a new mouse
naked in the nest:
we have three days. Use them. 

Round Like An Orange

The toenails of the decades click on the oak wood floor:

they patter past the post, mortality set on "stun";

they'll eventually get the zoomies

and then your race is run.

The other day I learned of a new procedure:

they peel your prostate like an orange, removing it whole

rather than slicing it. I don't know how they get it out,

or if it leaves a hole.

The yellow leaves are brilliant in the sun,

the birch bark's white puts cadmium to shame,

the sky gets pale closer to the ground,

the tide runs back the way it came.

Aubade

 Have I mentioned that a wind blowing up my nose
inflated me to gigantesquerie, and flew me, uprose,
(rows encolumnated, hedgerows overthrown), and gave
to every cipher just the meaning it could hold?

Have I said already (I have already said) that one
dog's cold nose could turn the world to ice, and
a cat's tongue warm it all, in the space between 
the first line and the third? Well, it's left undone, then,

and the sun lays rude and violent hands on me,
shakes me awake and tells me all the things still left to do.
All right. The first on my to-do list was to love you,
and that's done, that's never done, to do.

Vulture

When this poem germinated I was thinking only of vultures, of their long patient deliberations in the sky: the math teacher walked into it and surprised me. He was an ancient man who taught me calculus -- an amazement that still amazes.

A math teacher stooped in his pulpit walk:
as he turns he lifts one dull black tine
(a primary feather, like a sprig of chalk)
and slowly underscores the horizon line.

He is deliberate, hooded, ugly, sincere.
There is a beat (stroke of pen, sweep of oar)
in his blood-naked head only he can hear:
this is what it means for an old man to soar. 

In Praise of a Huntress Moon

And the sky en vidrios corúscat, multisplending;
O sake us for God, and mend us for bendas, bensittay!

Say clearly what you mean, before you end your say.

Look where the vultures ride the thermals, where you can

or can't see

the waves of air they ride on, hypérvolant and vigilant:

if we love to watch them, it's because we love to watch

the things we can't quite see. Mr God is like that: you find

the lint from his pockets, but his hands are always elsewhere.

I would not spend a lot of time 

turning inside out the cloth, or checking all the seams.

Bang! this damn tambourine, and sing a song of praise,

song of ending, song of nightfall, the iridéssing of default,

when the sky is violet lavender and fades, surprised

by such a clair à voyant, clair à voyaging moon.

Lever

Time is our home and death is our friend

-- Iain McGilchrist,

Knock when you come to the west door; be sure

to touch the river pebble in your pocket 

for luck; forget your excuses. 

Just answer the questions best you can.

No one is trying to trick you here.

Today the long road, east and west, was tilted

to be level with the sun. I guess you were busy

with your pry-bar, Archimede! 

That at least was an easy one to solve.

Lay it down on me: pull as hard as you like.

That metal crossbeam catches the morning sun: 

even second-hand, these tines of light 

pull gently every strand of me apart:

the brisket of me would fall from the ribs 

at a nudge. I have been a long time in the pot.

They say a friend might happen by for a meal,

and welcome. I have kept house untidily:

but friends will forgive the debris of a lived-in life.

March

The clouds have not quite lost their grip on the mountain's hair

blow though the wind blows, but
the fall leans away and misses the splash pool: March
is master here.

The god whispers at my ear, rapidly and in Greek I cannot catch
some dialect of Olympus no doubt

why send a messenger I can't understand? Do not fear but bring

these three as gifts...

But the slap on my face will do, in place of understanding, the sting

of celestial fingers on my face;

swim in the Sound in spring and the jellyfish will lay their tentacles

across your nose and cheek, just so:

many messengers, one message. You are asleep at your post. Little enough

We've asked of you:

Not even to understand: just to listen. The clouds tear free; red weals

on the face of the mountain,

which treads water and gasps. The swell is pale gray, mottled with white;

this time of year snags

buck silver and even the seals show them some respect: it is early,

too early: but even now too late.

I Am Rebuked For Silence

I am rebuked for silence, while a carrier group 
worth the assessed value of a midsize nation
sails into the Eastern Med, and fabulous sums are handed over
on my behalf. If you really can't tell: my silence is consent. 

I understand that the game must be played out:

but there are certain roles I do not care to play.

I am rebuked for silence: hear then my words, O Israel!

I love you beyond reason and beyond sense,

and the wheeling track of the stars knows 

the darkest thoughts we've shared. I will not

repudiate my love. And this also is a silence, for which

I also will be blamed. So be it. If the shoe were on the other foot

would a Jew be left alive, between the river and the sea?

I've heard their words. I listen. Silence is good for that.

Do I therefore forgive your sins? I don't. I am not much

in the business anyway, of blaming or forgiving. My

business is grief, which I get on with, day by day.

Pail

On the kitchen floor, a chrome pail 
left idle for the moment
stands in a flare of sunlight,
surrounded by reflection:
a white pool on the polished floor.

an imposition of a narrative line

upon disparate images, she said,

and like a good obedient boy

I chanted and believed, chanted and believed,

but I am quite suddenly old and

(not as suddenly) wicked, and now

I don't believe it. No. It's the story

that's real, it's always been the story,

the story makes the images, not the other way around.

As if I could make such things! Old and wicked

as I am: I'm not so impious as that.

And so much time given to those

old gilt cruel gods; so much time given

trying to sew a rag doll of myself. When

I could have followed a single splash

spilled from the jar of the sun; a moment's

careless radiance; a story of its own.

Making My Heart Beat

Sure. The whole project misconstrued or misconceived.
Thunderstorm at dawn: deep dark with lightning,
and now a morning pretending nothing ever happened,
but a gore of draggled blossom spread across the walk.

A wire threaded through the ribcage

might grow warm with each flash, and every kettledrum roll

could start something speaking, it seems, it seems

for a little while, it seems but it stops with the rain.

That Danish cockatoo decided, better not: and reading

his poisonous note, about the weak despair of women,

I can hardly not agree with him: better not. 

Still the nails drive deep, and the hands flex 

of their own accord. Another breath, and another: 

almost steady now, almost I could imagine that my breath

has caught its rhythm and could go on by itself: I am tired, so tired,

of making myself breathe; of making my heart beat.

Spring Slash

I am silent when called upon to witness:
I bow my head and mutter, "let each planet
take its course, let every life end where it will; why,
with no writ for life, should I open my palm for death?

Who is calling? You get no more of me
with your mighty obscurities. Say it plain
or get out of the road." My long patience
has run out. The Spring slash is burning, but no voice

comes from it. A beetle makes its slow desperate way
over the moss, while the shadows of birds and clouds
fill him with distress: O brother! We understand as much.
Our call is important to them. Yah. Fuck them.

A wind in the throat of the Gorge: a keening

and a death wail, and whitecaps on the river. It was snow

not long ago, and there'll be snow again before the year turns.

If that's a call I am not home.

Winter Afternoon

The pigeon's toes as he carefully
steps over his own feet: the cock
of his head at the swish of a car:
the night-echo of 4 p.m.
when the light has (mostly) drained from the sky
and rinsed away the day's greed,
(the day's greed for now) to make
room for the evening's: oh
my dear friend I miss you:
you were always undismayed
even when terrified, and 4 p.m. 
was a trifle to you. Now I am expected
to find my own courage, 
and I have none, and no one now
wears silks of outlandish colors,
turquoise: apricot:
chartreuse: plum:
how anyone faces this hour of the day
without a visitor in motley
who carries summer in her fists
I do not know.