The "Rushing" Sound

We build the house
that leans

towards its destruction.

We turn the ear
that listens

to its lumber
creaking.

If silence is the Word
of God, what sound

is suffering?

What mother sings
when soldiers

fall? Whose emptied

arms explain
this hollow

feeling?

When a child
learns to speak,

a voice

weighs nothing.

When a bird
learns to fly

it understands
the gravity

of bone,

the sanctity
of thresholds-

rising
and falling,

living
and ceasing,

fearing
and abiding

the rushing
sound...

the circumstantial
heaviness

of its own
wing.

Entropy of Thought

You won't find solace
here

at the bottom

of a cask
or a soot-filled

heart

but in
the sober

night

a tiny
fleck of vision

extracts
itself from

living-

forms
pattern

in the chaos.

Voice of the Dog (in Rain)

It says many things "the wind
is wet, the food is gone,

I'm chained- release me."

There is nothing like forlorn
as it moves through night

cracking like a whip.

When we were born
the darkness asked,

"what form, which vessel,
what seed, this flower?"

How carefully we live
escaping knowledge,

learning how to gallop
when the fences

fall apart.

From a distant yard,
a voice repeats its sorrow

tonight, in tongues
like water

as the rain
pours down.

Reflection

In a moment,
the river robed

in cloud,

a small bird
dives into

a deceitful
ending.

Yet, the Spring

Memory traps
the grim; the net-

long night,
winter wind.

Powerful how
we're punished-

a short hallway,
the failing day.

It's no light thing
to hesitate, to linger

when the snow
is melting.

These mortal fields,
this "tapping" on my window,

the dark moored boat,
the tethered dreams-

and yet, and yet
the spring.

The Precision of Leaving

There are places less significant
than this: gnarled trees,

the barn with the face of an old man
carved in its slates, the stagnant

black well. There were seasons
stacked like fields, rounded

haybails left out to dry,
the berry bush tangled

in weeds; each red fruit
choking. We gathered them

thinking of mulberry seeds
and imagined the pie.

There are reasons for leaving-
when the snow came down

grey ducks would fly
in V's precise as decision,

the pond still and mourning
in the farmer-child's eye.

The Art of Watching

Sometimes, seeing
thinks clearly, knowing-

across a field she watches
the sleek-feathered crows

each dark shape strutting
divergent, unplanned roads

picking purple-red beetles
from the dug-up snow

as the brown-hooded hawk
circles down.

Comfort

The wolf
curls its body

into a fist

of sleep.

The Window's Light

When we look in
from the dark,
the window's light
is cruel; when a body

becomes transparent
as leaf veins held
against a glowing sky
and struck by its beauty...

we sacrifice
our hidden
future.

Who shuts out
the cold by dying?
Who feeds the mind
with grains of night?

If our weight
becomes the same
as thunder, as infinite
as the shadowed hills,

if we look away
from suicidal stars,
the burning arc
of nature's will-

we come away
with nothing.

Haiku Exercise....

He slept-
the black shape
outside his window
kissed him.

In bare feet
the sands
danced
in the moonlight.

The sky spilled
out of its cup,
fell into
the sea.

The night's
terrible hand
plucked down
the stars

and tasted
them.

Dreamer

First cold-pressed
new moon,

the madame moth
to be discovered

in the quiet meadow-

the room
where I am sleeping.

The glass eye
blooms

like water-

the shape of drowning.

Even as my body
dreams

my tongue seeks
for flavor,

the sweetness
of these depths...

the fluid
downward

movement of
the dreamer.

Pity

Joined at the hip, the minutes
and hours, the time it takes

for a hair to split
two worlds-

your mouth,
my skin; to peel

the beautiful, swirling
reels of rose

from its golden
stamen.

I prefer to write:
"there is no pity

in these wrists, no
counting measure

for these bones
growing together,

no perfect solemn
covenant of duty-

just moments
without their secrets".

Sunset

White moves-
burns
the egret.

Flame
colored
wing.

Iris orange
eyes.

Tiger-lily
sky.

Absence

Any small thing
that outlives
its happiness

must learn
to keep
from freezing.

Slowly, the dying
flame quietly
tells its story...

"while there was
some warmth
left of morning,

she described
her dream-
the last one,

the lost one,
the one about
her absent lover".

Now, in the cold
trees, a vision,
a frozen bird-

stiff and white
and empty
as these words.

Deliverance

A note to God: here
is the history I promised-

the center of my city,
the mouth of my belonging,

the secret, serious invisible
longing, the stolen jewel.

Bless the younger life
that borrows its body,

returns- dissected
and touched and broken.

Bless the pages I have
torn and crushed

and thrown away-
imagine

the mistakes I've made.
In a long letter, I question

"deliverance?"

Haiku - Water and Sand (draft)

I am familiar with water. Walk
and the sand will walk
with you; water will only
run away. At night,

the blackness
spills

and the water
spills

with it.

A Simple Quest

Everywhere, light
fills itself with itself-

I have not knelt
down
in years or

watched the shore
with earth-colored
eyes, understood

the simple quest
of sky, the grey
complexion of sea,

the startling line
that divides them
completely.

How is it possible
to leave this
unanswered?

I should have
looked more often
for reconciliation-

the long gull,
tipped wing
that could

so fragilely
connect them.

The Stone Collector

I collect stones. My hands renew
the curves, the secret trauma
of treasured bones-
how nature's chisel, her strong,
relentless mallet
shaped them.

One, is like the belly
of a pregnant girl,
sandblasted egg-
a birth-button,
filled with foam and scent
of sea, folds inward-

almost human.

Another, sacred tablet
scrolled by gods
and dropped against
the sand- read now
by insect-crabs and feeding
white gulls.

Balsa wood, ochre
twisted sculptures filled
with broken, pearly shells-
strange and pretty dolls
of tide's children stranded
on the shore.

The sound of moving
water in the pebbles,
remnants of fireworks,
softly fizzle back and forth
fashioning the art, my hands
so pleasurably explore.

The Edible Part

My search is an old one.
I crack the seeds
with careful deliberation;

inside their skulls
are makings of flower.

I've ruined that now,
by exposing the sweet,

fleshy, edible part.

Passage

The last house in town,
a bridge, not the sturdy kind,
railroad tracks
no one has traveled
in a long time;

the sky shoved back by
a dark, invisible hand,
the only moon, a lamp
slow burned, three colored,

one in each eye-

a man must learn
to recognize what
lies within him.

A country, huddled stones,
the smell of it- raw earth,
gun-powdered loins,
dirty oiled streets,

serum gold, neon
tumored stars,
a river made of heat,
twisted veins-

a man
must wrestle with
his tangled nature.

Duty

Every so often, I make
an instant, infinitely

making

in spite of myself,
a memorable circle

(etern-fully)

How lucky to laugh
in this most-fear;

have you

questioned the immense
advantage of the fool?

Somewhere, while
the thought-less

breath...

slow, hushed,
slenderly

the blossom,

(a metaphor
for duty)

opens air.

A Graceful Addiction *(First Steps in Snow)

I bring with me-
(remember, I have lived
harder and harder,
complete and impossible)
I bring with me
a beautiful planet.

For my light, somewhere
in this room, I give
my eyes to science, all
exiled, dreaming, secret
and unfinished- a perpetual infant.

I understand (one brief,
necessary moment) the heart,
the land, this steaming
island as if I, once
belonged here.

In a lifetime, once or twice
the soul moves gently
in its shell.

I leave (a graceful addiction
to this world) unspoken words,
the language of my prayers-
who remembers in springtime
the first steps in snow?

*I bring with me
a beautiful planet,

for my light, somewhere
and unfinished- always
a perpetual infant,

I understand, as if
I once belonged here

the sadness of the feet
that made them,
those first few steps
in snow.

Un-Life

"What are dark things?"
not, strangely, the middle
of a fire, but... cold

black-seeded life, the small
uneven dots on the back
of feathered moths,

the dusty night-flower,
charcoal-satin clothed
beneath our window.

And other thoughts...
midnight grass, shy
purple green, dried leaves

fingered by the brown vine,
the earthen cracks it streams from-
immeasurably deepening.

Un-life, frail dark myth (despite)
a corpeslike gleam arising
from the center of our fires.

Companion

No one
will believe us...

our paths intersect
without moving-

moving, now
dense as grass

with its thousand
dancing legs.

Of Journey

Each man thinks
of distance,

white, strolling
patches of light

grown quiet,
stronger,

different.

The body is
a foot, a shoe

the length
of darkness,

the lungs
of night

filled with
"entering" -

a mouth
a door,

a crack
within

the stone;

my warm breath
on a window...

a small
instrument

of journey.