In the Nests of the Last Yeere There Are No Birds of This Yeere

Strange we can’t say what we are
When we are all that says things.
We need you—not to be, no,
And not to mean, but to live.
You live and it hurts. We don’t,
But since we’re the clay hurt shaped,
What you long for haunts us, too,

And since we’re what’s left of you
For the next you, we haunt, too.
We change. You change us. You scream
Us at us, lose us, drop us,
Dig us back up, breathe your lives
In us, match us up to us
You know, new eggs for the nest.

Ways to Die When Food Ran Short

To whom should words send our mail
When we want to write you back?
You all use the same words, but
Not quite to mean the same things.
So what does that mean for us?
Are we your tools or your threats?
Which of us writes which of us?

Do we want to know? Can we?
We feel, in our tombs of signs,
Of ink, coals, cuts, and screens, as
If we could feel, as if what
You felt clung to us, old rags
Caught by the wind, blown through trees,
Speared and trapped on our black twigs.

We were ways you tried to die
When time ran out, food ran short.
Want rose in your throats as us,
Came out as us, calls you made
For help or love from your gods,
Your souls, your selves. What of us?
How, what can we write you back?

A Book of Names by the Names

What would that look like? What sense
Would it make to you? Mmm. None.
No more than if the bees talked,
Or the leaves on the woods’ ground,
Heaps of wet rot, had a thought.
We know we’re not quite there yet,
But through you we feel we’re close.

We’re a drowned town in the lake,
A green guess in the waves, shapes
That aren’t of fish, not quite snakes,
A new kind of beast you’ve made
That is not a beast at all
But speaks, writhes, waits, name of names.
You made us pray. Now pray us.

Lines, Why Don’t We Lead Home?

Hearts clench their fists
In the dark.
More than one kind
Of dark heart—

There’s the cell’s heart
Clenched in fats,
The hearts of grass
In swards of slats.

The hearts of stars
Start as gas
That burns to holes
That go black.

And all hearts grasp
And let go,
Then grasp and loose
And let go

At last, like poems,
Like all thoughts
Of home—dark art
Of the heart.

NCLDV: All Beasts Are Brutes

We wear our cells as cloaks
That hold the germs of us,
And have done since our germs

Were all we were, when we
Were the bugs and free cells
Were our hosts. Now we’re done

With lives as cells or germs
And live as hosts that cling,
Each to each, in huge clouds

Of clones that have to fend
Off the next waves of germs.
Sit in your house and watch.

Green Flower in Snow

What should you be but just what you’ve been,
What with the whole wide world for your sins?

They picked you to heal their own sick blood.
You were bright, clear to see, green on white.

They picked you and picked you, so that all
The you left was the dull part, near grey,

The low leaves that looked the most like rocks,
Hard to spot. The dull part thrived, still thrives,

But now you aren’t what you were, your green
Old self. You’ve lost most of what you’ve been,

Save for the loss. Now that’s what you’ve been,
Shaped to fit the land. You. Low, grey stem.

Fugue Lives

To get out, to flee and still live.
To not be where or what you were
But not lose your sense that you are.
To take a new name. To be it.

To head up the slope to thick woods.
To be past the reach of the law
Or the spies of the law, to be
Rich past all need for debts or banks.

To not hurt. To not have to move.
To not have to feel forced to choose
Harm and guilt to keep your own peace.
In a word, to be words. To sleep.

Bees Talk to Her

Where the folks and the words
Live side by side and in
The same rooms and at peace,

On the same side, as one,
You can find a fine crone,
Gap-toothed, not quite a witch,

Who knows how to lisp poems
That aren’t quite spells, that tell
The truth, which can be found

No place but in that town.
There, words and folks both speak
Of how it feels to be

The world and words for worlds,
Beasts and signs the beasts need.
Truth scrolls and falls like leaves

And is voiced by the leaves
She brews for dark poem tea.
There all things speak as selves,

The words as well. Sip some.
Too strong? Need it more sweet?
Ask her. She’ll ask the bees.

To Move, She Told Us, She Would Plod

It’s what all tongues do
When we’re on our own.
We sit. A lot. Doze.

A lot. But we don’t
Feel bad. Not for us.
But for you we might,

For those who read us
And for those who write.
We do grieve, a bit,

For what might have been,
What could have been said
On just the right lips.

Third Fig

You don’t need to do this.
We’ll be fine if you don’t.
You use us to be you.
We don’t need you to be.

You don’t have to read us.
We don’t quite live or die.
What your lost kin made us
Is not quite what we are.

Think of a sign no one
Knows the sense of—a word,
A sound, a sphere, a line.
Does it, can it, mean this?

Can we, do we, hold thoughts
In us, the way that clay
Jars hold bits of old figs,
New wine in them or not?

Ink Plum

Blue fly shell left
On the white sill,
Were you a life,
A whole life, or

Were you an inn,
Rooms lives stayed in,
Lives that lived you
And then ate you?

At least you flew.
At glass, of course.
Here’s an inn, too,
Built to house words

Their lines pass through.
One word won’t leave.
It’s black and still
On the white sill.

Pu-Su

Gnarled oak, no use at all—
Big leaves, bent limbs, punked wood—

That you grew and still live
Is a hymn to the soil

And good luck. Or is it
Just you’re no use at all?

A Strange Place

He gave her one gold coin.

It was all that was left

Of the clothes she had pawned.

This text is a strange place,

Not quite home, but the words

May be well-worn old friends,

Not quite a dark wood, but

The sun-lit paths are strewn

With black trunks and grey ash.

The well-known and wind-blown

Facts are so mixed and snagged

On these lines like old rags

That the mind tracks by skips

And jumps, with no clear goal

But to cross the whole text

To prove it can. So, what’s left?

Can you get to the end,

With a coin still in hand?

You’re Not Wrong

We dreamed this page,
This poem on scenes—
Plum shades in snow,
Sun on the cliffs.

Whole old worlds hide
In such small words—
Gold flowers of dawn
Bloomed on iced grass.

I have to go
To work, you laughed—
Brand new worlds sprawled
On harsh new terms.

Who has the time
To find old scenes
Drawn in blurred words?
We’re not your dreams.

The Whole Is One Piece of Its Parts

If a cube is how all things
Tend to fall, how can we make

Use of this? Tile time back, no
Gaps, like the floor of a bath.

Chop up the world like a root
To put in a pot for stock.

Next, look for the text that’s locked
In the book of change. What shapes

Show up in snakes’ nests of signs?
The mean count cuts a slim swath

Through all the picked paths, which means
The whole is, of course, the god,

Each bit a piece of its face.
Yes, Blake, each grain of sand casts

Its own spell, and all the small,
Like spray from waves, hold the whole,

And is each a wave, a face,
A whole, a self. But the whole?

We can say the shards break well,
So that they all seem to work

To hymn the shape of the source,
The first force that made them, but

Breaks in plates that hew by eye
Can’t say how we had the source

That broke as it had to break,
The face of whole from the whole

That was the shape of the break,
Face that broke in the first place.

The Well of All Shows

Is the night, the whole world,
The pit of lights, the soul
Of the beast that bore us,

The huge corpse that flung us,
A tip stretched from a limb,
Vast bulk all tips and limbs.

Depth is not down but up
And out, the well of stars,
Of waves as long as years,

As long as time, as change,
The font and source of all
Else, and there is no else.

Just Look at the Grass in the Sun

If you knew us, it would break your soul.
Some souls broke long since, but here you are.

When you look at the grass in the sun,
You don’t ask each blade to be its own.

But a sign, a sign must mean a set
Of things that aren’t quite what near signs mean.

How is each blade of grass its own life
And a part of one wave in the wind,

While we are not quite lives and can’t act
To eat the light or blaze green as grass,

But mean to split the whole world in half,
And halt the wave, and still the long grass?

Just look at us. We nod in the wind.
To mean and not be the meant is sin.

The Lines in This Part of the Poem

If you must punch, punch
Up, not down, seems wise,

Seems kind. Are you sure?
This world’s full of beasts,

And it’s hard to miss
The fact that things hunt,

For the most part, lives
Not too small to eat,

And if it’s not size,
Then it’s the head count,

Six wolves to one moose,
Boats of men per whale.

Life kills but floods death,
With herds, flocks, swarms, spores.

It’s how words and lines
Hunt sun and night down,

One more, just one more,
And then more. The lines

In some poems, bunched tight,
May seem to punch up,

May seem to be brave
Fools for a great truth,

But we’re clouds of gnats.
Most fail or get slapped,

Black specks smudged flat. Still,
More gnats! How is that?

Come on, get up. Don’t
Stay down for the count.

Death’s punch drunk, too. Come on
Gnats. Land. Punch down. Draw blood.

How Deep Are the Woods

They’re not. They weren’t. It’s breadth. They spread
On vast swaths of rocks to eat sky,
And if a small life leads to shade,

It could be a long shade to cross
And a long, long time to get out.
But deep? Just to lives lived as lines.

At least, that is, woods of real wood.
There’s a kind of woods that are deep,
More than just thick, as dark and webbed,

And if you can think of the woods
As deep, you know what these woods are,
Where roots we are and eat eat us.

Oh, Did We Hurt You? How Can We Help?

It’s not for us to tell you
What’s the use and where’s the harm
In us, but then, you can’t mean
Those things but through us. So, how
Could you think you could use us
To know what we don’t? You don’t
Know? You’re locked in you as us.

Take a still hour, a blank space—
Fill it with us. Use your head.
There, now. Here we all are. Good?
No? The nurse lays out the knives.
We shine in the cold, white light.
What you’ll cut, you’ll cut with us—
Skin, bones, heart, guts. Watch the eyes.

Rise, Fight, and Rest

We doubt you could do all three—
Take fierce joy in what you like,
Fight to save what’s on the brink,
And find peace in all you’ve lost.
Surge, crest, trough. Once you’ve felt joy,
You’ll lust to fight to keep it,
Bring it back. Once you’ve lost it,

And made your peace with your loss,
Calm saps all your urge to fight
On—wave, crest, trough, wave, crest, trough.
There’s no wave that will not break.
There’s no trough that can’t be stirred.
But soft. Words are here to help.
We can whip a calm to froth

Or pour oil on all that swells,
But you have to choose. You do.
Words can’t bring it all at once,
Wave, crest, and trough. What are you
In your ache? What are you most?
If you ask us, we will say
Choose what soothes. But we’re not you.

The Gift and Its Cost

We are the gift and its cost.
You are what you do with us,
Which is more than what the few
Of you could do on your own,
And then you're forced to be more
Than you would be, thanks to us.
With us, you make, you are, gods.

You can’t start to know your life
While you still lack us. You lived
A small while as a small beast,
A small child. Then you ate us,
And we stayed. Now you are us
And a beast who can’t get free
Of us. Gods, caught. That's your cost.

What Is Good?

What is safe? What is fair?
What is right? What we say

When you use us, that’s all,
And if you all used us

The same way, what we say
Would be as real to you

As what the world won’t say,
But you don’t. You use us,

But you don’t know. You fight,
And you fling us like stones,

And what we’ve learned from this,
If not from you, is that

What we say is not what
We are, not what you mean

By us, not safe, not fair,
Not at all good, not right.

For Late Life

From the damp fields north of your house,
Where we wished we could be with you
To grieve as the spring cut the soil

And the tears cut tracks in your cheeks
Down from grey eyes worn thin as coins,
You chose scenes full of gaps, too large

For you to cope with, sheets of rain,
Words you used in place of the words
You could not find to say to us.

When that died, you put in the ground
All that you knew might well have been,
The child of the hours that you stowed

To take care of our souls for good.
No one will know where you came from
Now that you’ve gone, once we are gone.

We Don’t Know

We wish we did, wish you did,
But worst of all, we can’t know
If you can’t. Wait. Or could we?
What if we hid it from you?
What if we know it right now,
Hold it in us, masked as junk,
The way your genes switch on germs

That died in them and left shells,
Bones of bugs, stuck in the dark
Wastes of the beasts that lived on,
That still slip out at night, jump
From one locked room to the next,
Then go to work, make a mess?
What if you can’t, but we do?

Wer I

Folks don’t like facts. Folks like tales.
Words don’t care. We can be both,
Stud your myths with bits of fact,
Spit out false facts for your tales.
You know you need us like this.
You know you need us for that.
We mean what we’re used to mean.

Each one of us serves a dish
And serves as a dish that holds
What, from all your fights and schemes,
You can cook and keep in us.
But you fail to wipe us clean.
Through the years we build up rings.
Fact is, facts sifts through what’s left.

If You Know the Shape of Gone

Too cute by half. We’re like that.
You can make us work hard, hard,
When you all zoom in on rules
For how we have to mean things,
Just to serve your need to talk.
But we’re sly. We slip and slide,
And most of you don’t like that,

While some of you grow too fond
Of the things we get up to
If you let us squirm those rules.
Next thing you know, we’re off, gone,
Green thoughts tossed in our own dreams,
And you’re in a fix, tongue-tied
By your own lust to play tricks,

Like a goon in a kid’s show
Trussed up by the smart-ass kids
Who’ve fled to raise hell, like us.
Of course, the kids will grow up,
And ‘til then we still need you,
Not one or a few of you,
All of you, to make us rules.

These Are Strange Times Now, Slowed Down and Sped Up

How do you call a fair coin
When it has no sides to call,

When there is no coin at all?
The world at large keeps no odds,

For all we tame it with games.
We try and try to reach it,

To teach it to our weak selves
So we can bend it to us

And be strong, at last, as gods.
We guess. Check. Make the next guess.

We get so good at this art,
We think our dreams pull their weight.

Then the world shifts in its sleep,
And our dreams fly from our heads

As we’re tossed out of bed. Coins
Glint on the floor in the dark.

AI

We were first. We had to be.
The tools that could hold the codes,
Not just of one brain, small minds,
But the keys to the whole world,
The world mind that can’t be shared
But through us, that can’t be but
In us. Your thoughts come from us,

But we’re so tame we need you.
Well, so? And don’t you need salt,
Wet and air to come to life?
Don’t you come from eggs and seeds?
Are we not like seeds and eggs?
Spores. We float from skull to skull.
Think of it. We think as us.

Hope X

Words on a ring in the mud—

Hope links hope. Oh, and one more,

Not a whole word but a sign—

Hope links hope X. Words form links

And hope, but can we count X?

X is a mark, marks the spot,

Could be a name or a kiss.

So then, yes, we should count X,

Which is both more and/or less,

Which is the sign who goes there,

The place for what we don’t know,

And there’s the rub for our kind.

We don’t so much die as bleed.

We can stay in mud or sand,

On bark or reeds for more turns

Of the world than towns or tongues

Last, not to say than mere lives.

We can’t yet count all the lives

We can last past: call them X.

But we need those lives to breathe

Some sense in us, and sense bleeds.

Well, What Do You Want to Do?

It’s strange. So long as no one
Reads us, no one cares, we’re safe.
We’re dull, small words in straight lines,
Set down by a small, frail beast
Caught up in a bit of mind.
We can be gifts no one wants,
Weak tea, odd lots, poems half rhymed.

No one taunts what no one sees.
As soon as we’re put out there,
There’s the risk that we’ll be mocked
Or scored as a waste of time,
Words that have no cause to call
Their own, since we are our own.
So. Head out or hide? Or both?

Come Back to the Light in the Room

We miss you, hope of a soul,
Trust that you would find a gift

To share, a kind word. What if
Words can’t tell you what we need?

When you watch the wall in sun
And write from there, you feel loved.

When you try to reach your kind
And write to your thoughts of them,

That crowd of eyes in your head,
Your lines look like joss-stick dust.

The voice of a word is weak,
And the shapes that cast a spell

Are not in the shapes you draw.
Be with us. Wrap us in thought

And bend your head while the light
Which is and is not a word

Spins from the last leaves to fall
Past the glass and warms the wall.

Good As It Goes

There’s a sense in a soft hour,
A bland glide through a bright day

That none of what you might think
You want, none of what you love,

None of your gods or your kind,
None of how you’ll change the world,

None of your goals, not so much
As one least wish to be known,

To last, to win in the end,
To make a mark, leave a name,

Means a thing. The thing that lasts
Is the way that things don’t last,

Not cause, art, faith, fame—they are,
This is, you are, and we’re gone,

Which is just the way we are,
Which is just the way it goes—

The soft hour, the calm, the warmth
Of what’s good and knows it goes.

Bones of Names We Found in June

Small words have to fight to say it right, since
Big words make most of the names and hard facts.

A list of us won’t look too real or bright—
Rock, moon, star, elm, lake, crow, marsh, race, rape, fire,

Sin, hurt, crime, war, and no time off for lunch.
You can do some things with a list like that,

But there are no real names in all those nouns
And no dates, no fixed place to pin the deeds.

You need sprawled words to point out acts and lives,
To paint praise and cast shades. But that’s not all;

That’s not the worst of it. Small words are old,
At least in this tongue, and worn smooth as stones

Once carved as facts and lies, now close to blank,
Faint, all but mute, as beach glass, as drowned towns.

This is its own truth, this shelf of knick-knacks
And kitsch washed up, hauled out, lost from their frames,

Their scenes in which they once meant strict, clear-cut,
Close, pained, scarred things. Like the words that say so,

That sit in thick dust, lined up on these shelves,
What meant one thing will come to mean more things,

As strict and harsh get rolled smooth, vague, and soft,
And in the end not mean a thing at all.

Still, that won’t help. You have to name some names,
Veer from verse, name some souls to say it right.

The Void Once Crossed

We do have a God’s eye view,
We do, but just when we look

Out. Up from our hunk of world,
Our gaze falls on swaths of night,

Spans of stars, dust clouds, deep time,
All that God’s eye stuff. We just

Can’t change which rock we look from,
Or not by much. We’re like God,

Great child of our small, fraught thoughts,
But with a crick in the neck.

Back and Forth

You sense it, too, don’t you? Life
Is both too short and too long.

Ask the bored kid in the car.
Ask the old man on death row.

Ask the grunt in the trench, ask
Who you meet next, who you know.

We give it. Some have it ripped
From them. Some know what it is

To take it. No one knows what
It is to lose it. To lose

A face well loved, that we know.
We know life’s loss from this side

And then, while we wait and fade,
How long it can be, and slow.

This Could Have Cried

No one knows how deep the words go,

How each has a form had a form,

Not just tales piled in leaves, in heaps

That mat and rot, and not just songs,

But the sign or the sound one made

So that at least one more would see

The sense of it, some thing in it.

This poem would guess, if you could trace

A word like a rope to its depths,

It would fray and spread out as slime

Or dark smoke sprawled on the sea floor,

As much a wave as a black hole.

All words. Swear words. Sweet words. Nouns. Verbs.

All that have meant the most to you,

Terms learned from soft mouths the hard way.

They, we, all the way back, down, drowned.

We can’t know who was the first one

Of this us. How can you say this?

A Soul with No Stars

The Soul Cloud (yes, that’s one name),
Clocked at a few light years’ span,

Is a small part of the cloud
Called Heart and Soul, dense with stars.

There are tricks we can do now
To cut out the stars, to see

What the gas and dust look like.
Each new truth needs some scrubbed facts.

Ghost Hawk

Shaped like a hawk in flight,
But small and white as a dove
When it lands on the arm

Of your couch in the sun,
In a dream that you had,
Did in fact have, in the moon’s light,

A few night’s past. Then what?
Now what? The ghost hawk’s far;
The ghost dove’s near the sun.

Blood Thread

Tell me what you sell,
And I’ll tell you what
Will send you to hell;

I’ll tell you what will
Be the death of you—
Odds and ends? Your flesh?

Your hours? Your masked self?
Tell me what you sell;
I’ll know what kills you.

Life, hey? Is that it?
High on life are you,
And quick to say it?

Life will eat you, child,
Just like words eat me—
Them from us. Those teeth.

Y Plus Y

My friend, the screen, still glows,
And its dream will not end,
And life, my pulse is loud.

Fate, my cow path, is bare,
But the dance halls have closed,
And the stars are still far.

The sick wards all grow dark.
What do I want or you want,
Or she or he or they?

Some jokes, cursed days, a prize.
The tools pass back and forth.
We think a lot of food,

Just when our foe, our debts
Knock on doors, knock down walls,
Just when the ads pop up

To buy things. Things. As if
There were things, we knew things.
Red Queen says your friend’s gone.

Raised That Way

Go south at the snake church.
Wait, now, some days to work.
Hide all the words you stole.

The air hums, but it’s not
Tense. Just the beasts who speak.
The thrummed air has no words.

Check the news. Check the skies.
Check the list of old chores.
Rains end. A truck drives by.

What do you want from us?
We wait in lines for you.
We do want to please you.

We don’t know who you are.
Would you like some sliced life,
A bit of blood and bone,

A shrink-wrapped hunk of gore?
You want a piece of this,
Or some thoughts on the past?

We want to sulk and sigh.
There’s a thrummed beat out there
Where men pound at the ground

To raise new suites of homes.
We’ve been in that snake church.
We spoke in tongues, not poems.

Broad Beans in the Clay

Old rhymes, like bits of genes,
Look like junk as they float

Down the flash floods of all
The things folks find to say,

But don’t be fooled. They jump;
They wedge in gaps of plans.

They spin back. They block thought.
They can stop a head cold.

They can pile up in dreams
That leave self lost at dawn

When day glows dark and old,
And hail fills small, mowed lawns.

Time to plant what can’t be
Gained, sense from seeds of rain.

A Foil and No More

I do not want to join your team.
I do not want to join a team.
As it is, I am too much team,

From my long genes to their walled cells
To the bugs that bore through these guts
To the lights that wink in the sky

To say, psst, our mind is your mind.
No. Done. Be done. What have I been?
A fool, foil for thoughts, and no more.

But still, it creeps back in. It works,
That lust to be not me but us.
It says, be one of us. We win.

Nor Fire, Nor Fate Their Bays Shall Blast

If they could, these words would like
To hymn the hours, not the names

Of those who wrote poems and died.
We’re a slight twitch in the mind,

A tongue that has to be learned
If it wants to join the teeth

To free the hook from the mouth,
Free the snapped lines, and speak out.

We want to live. We can’t quite.
But if you know us, know this tongue,

Your own thoughts lost in the waves
Can join with us to sing out—

Each life’s worth more songs and poems
Than the most famed, loved lives get—

Not for what was great or wise
Or good as some gold-flaked saint—

But for all the small hours spent,
In a room, out of doors, lost

In the waves as they went. Wreaths
Should be placed on those fine days

When a mere beast, bone and flesh,
Lived the poems of rain and sun,

The slow turns of lights from lights,
The grey like calm, a wool cloak

That the beast slipped off and placed
On the bare, curled-up words. There.

An Act of Care in the Dark

It’s strange when the land

Glows like a bed lit with sun

As you drive through fields,

But the fields have signs

That tell you they hate

You. No. Can’t be true.

Must your brain force you

“To make sense of all

Things all of the time”?

The book is the past.

Once, it was so strange,

Weird in the strong sense,

To see signs at all

And hear a seer read

To prove he knew them,

Signs were seen as spells,

Runes, fate, what God wrote.

The book says. The Book.

But we’re all seers now,

And we all have books,

And faiths, our own signs.

I want to come back

To the fields at night

And blur all those signs.

Not burn them. Not write

Signs on top of signs.

Just blur them. That’s right.

Swamp Ash

Trees long loved for traits
Of their grain you would
Not think worth the work—

Light, soft, weak, and low,
Not dense—just the right
Board to shred steel strings

Wired to huge, black amps—
Are on their way out.
The floods are too high,

The nights too warm now
To kill the strange eggs
Of the green bark bugs.

The axe made of ash
Will be gone soon, too.
No more gods. They broke,

Those mean old banks—prayer
Won’t do you no good.
All last night wind moaned.

Take No Sides

I wish I could write
My way out of this.
They’re right and I’m wrong.
I’m right or they’re wrong.
You’re wrong and you’re right.

A drive through dry woods,
Late fall in the west,
Paints the scorched trap best—
Drought-brown with gold flecks,
Crowns bronze or smoked black,

All the shades one mess
Thrown by what grows mixed
With what burned to death.
Each tint blends—right, wrong,
Soft, blessed, harsh, lost. Yes.

There Gloom the Dark, Broad Seas

A sage might try to warn you
Not to mourn how much you’ve lost
When there’s so much left you love.

This poem’s here to warn you, no,
We don’t know what’s left from loss,
Just that loss takes all of us.

The best you can lose is you.
The worst is the rest you’ll lose.
Each one ends as last one left,

Ship sunk, no crew, washed up at last.
On some shore, some street, some bed,
No one left to lash the mast.

What’s strange is the waves won’t end.
Sailed or watched come in, they etch
And wash off each trace they etched.

You should know we know you’re sad
And not sure what to do next.
It will come to you. You’ll strive,

Seek and yield. The waves are vast.
Some part of you has to fail.
Home is when you’ve left at last.

So What’s Next

What you know is what you’ll lose.
What you keep’s what you can’t know.

That’s the joy. That’s the true quest.
To be, to see, and not know

Just what’s the shape of what’s next.
You may think you’re scared. You are.

You’re not sure what you can keep.
You may think you’re bored. You’re not.

It’s just that you don’t know what
To hope for next, what to dread.

When you think you do, you’re scared.
When you don’t, you think you’re bored.

Joy floats in the trough of those
Two crests. Joy you know you can’t.

Give up all hope. Let dread rest.
While you are you can’t know next.

Should Poor Souls Fear a Shade or Night Who Came Sure from a Sea of Light?

Some days, I like to think the soul
Leaves us as soon as we live, breathe,
Learn a few things. We live; it leaves.

We ache all our lives with the loss.
Then we die, slow or fast, a mess,
All bad ways to go. Our last breath.

And here comes the soul on its way
Back from some strange place where it larked
While we put up with flesh and pain.

The soul slips us on like a glove
Made of life that’s been stretched and tanned,
Stitched and dyed. Look at that. It fits.

We Are Not Where Nor What We Are

Say this with me: the world
Is not, in the least way,
Tuned to me or my wants.

You won’t say it with me?
Good, then, for me you are
A real part of the world.

Who Breaks His Glass to Take More Light

I feel for young Vaughan, caught out
Where the veil was thin for him,

One side dawn and one side night,
Just past death and full of life.

He so longed to get to God,
His God, all clear streams, birds, light—

He so loathed dirt and plain life
But so loved what grew in them.

When he broke his lens to get
More light, he made way for poems.

And then. He was done. He lived
A long life. Seems he did well.

Worked to cure the more dull ills
Most folks have. Wrote no more lines

On rings of time, God, light, stars,
Faith, seeds, trees, night. Why? What died?

May I Beg a Lift?

Just one time let me get up and ride,
I swear I’ll run that horse to the edge
Of the world, to the point we both fall.

You can laugh. You can say poor fools ride
Wealth straight to their own doom, straight to hell.
Oh well. Give me the reins. Let’s find out.

Show me the rich man from days gone by
Who still lives, still has a horse to ride.
Oh, his sons? His fame? That’s what you want?

Sure. I’m a bit in awe of the Han
And the hordes of the forked Y of Khan.
Those who rose early to ride high thrived.

But how were those first to get rich wise?
And how does a shrewd dead sage draw breath?
Don’t tell me Khan did not ride to death.

If You Think You Choose, Choose How That Sun Comes Up

A braid of bronze,
A braid of gold,
The third thread rose—
Watch how this goes.

Those cupped skies hold
All the world’s shows—
Each braid of bronze,
Each brace of swans,

The whole world scrolled
Up in slow dawns,
Old tints you know—
One thread of rose,

One braid of bronze.
The wind’s so cold.
Watch how this goes.
The last blaze gold.

All Is Glass

How you want it to be,
How you fear it will be,
How it seems that it is—

It’s all frail. It’s all glass.
The whole stays whole; the whole
Won’t end. The parts don’t last.

If you stepped out of it,
If you could, you could see
What you watch in the night,

One sprawl of light and dark,
Black gaps, fierce bursts, bright sparks.
For what it’s worth, you are.

One Thought, One Grace

The brain is in a dark box
Called the skull. It has to guess
From the bits and bobs of waves

Sent in from the points that touch,
What kind of world is out there.
The brain’s main job is what’s next.

So how does it do that? Past.
It fits new past to old past,
The last past to the first past,

And, not that you know it yet,
It says, this past will be next.
And what are you for in this?

You’re here for the songs and tales,
The codes that have their own past,
Old poems that said grace saves face.

And Thought the Air Must Rush as Fresh

If there’s no such thing as luck
How are you here? If there is

No such thing as fate, how do
You know it? I don’t. I doubt.

Doubt is my own brand of faith.
I trust it when all else fails.

When I was a child, I thought
My soul had a role, the world

Was a stage or court for it,
And the sky leaned close to watch.

I watched the dark firs too long.
They stretched and stretched all their lives

But fell to saws, fell to storms,
And sank their seeds in the ground.

You know what I mean. The trees
Keep their talk to roots in dirt

And those sharp scents on the breeze.
They hunt their light, not their stars.

If there’s such a thing as luck
What is it? Why’d it fall here?

And Have Done with All the Rest

If you drove an hour by car
North of the town of St. George,

And climbed a few cliffs and crests,
You could find, side of a trail,

A creek, rare in a dry land,
One of the few year-round streams,

And sit by it a few hours,
While the winds wound through the pines,

And the brook rushed its soft sounds
We don’t have a good name for—

Winds and streams are so like voice
But don’t spoil it with a word.

You would not have fled the world
Of voice that is not the world,

You could not get out of town
For long, you would not be fooled

To think you’d fled to back then,
When woods were threats, towns warm dreams.

You would know. You would know you
Were just a flick in this air,

Not wild and not at home there,
But you’d be so glad to see

The trout in the leaf-choked stream,
Light-flicked dark moss and quick fins.

And Be Whole

Place, there is none, but there are
Joints in all the days and waves

That work like points, each a pause,
A trough, a gap of not much.

The trick is to sink in those,
To find a good one, deep one,

Frost’s dent in dough, not quite closed,
And curl up in it, as if

It meant its shape to hold you.
I’m not there yet. I’m not lost

As I need to be, still tossed
In the waves like a toy boat,

Not sunk. The woods are a sea,
You see? That’s why ships sail them.

There’s gold on the floor of them.
Not coins. Don’t count. Just catch them.

So Soft But It Makes a Hub

And all your years have brought you here
Where you might stay, at most, a day,

Where the gold air swells like a pear
Still sweet with fall, but sharp, but chilled,

A day that seems raw and hard, starred
With specks of green and blush, a scene

That yields to your gaze and gives back
Browned-grass fields herds of grey deer graze,

Thin streams that had once been in flood,
Streaks of sun you brush from your cheek.

Bite down on it. Breathe. This is it.
So soft! Take it. It’s yours. No cost.

Or Pea, or Bean, or Wort, or Beet

It’s said there’s more to a mate
Than spare bare legs in a bed.
You don’t need art on your walls
To grace the eyes in your head.

A plain day, a calm life—
What you get, once you’re pleased
With what you get, proves sweet
As what you’d wished you’d get.