Time out of Mind

You can get close. I won’t bite.
You can get close as you want,

But know this, there will be things
In me that you will not see,

That will hide, still, with no help
From me. I am not a jar

With a cork, box with a lid,
Chest with a key on a chain.

This poem is a small glass space,
Ein Klein Krug. You can see through,

And in the right light it looks
Like there’s not a thing in me

Or there is—just what is it?
Stream of sand or glint of wings?

Peer in, as close as you like.
I have no mouth. I won’t bite.

Worlds Were Then As It Is Now

At dusk, I hook lines to clouds,
Then let the words haul me up.

Not my words, but they don’t mind.
I’m more theirs than they are mine.

They drag; I drift. We float by.
Old poems lie like square fields, ripe

With lines of grain, gold and green,
I can’t quite read from this height

Of so much time. Strange but fine,
Light fades and dark sails on by.

When the World Is Blank, Why

Draw a face on the sun, beast
On the moon, eyes on a pine?

We are the face of the world,
And look where that face got us.

I like to think of the musk
Deer would dab on sky and stars,

The trails ants would find in space,
The high host glimpsed by a bug

On the hunt for the next host.
I should stop. So, so, we see

What we see. We have to watch
The world as if it were us—

For us we’re the world that counts.
Eyes are us, help us, kill us.

Lists to One Side of the Nest

“Nooks don’t get their fair due.”

Brush, hunch, scratch, itch, and then back.

Once more. Hunch, brush, itch, and scratch.

You could turn a world in this

Crack in a wall of cracked bricks.

This is your bed. You call it

Your head, your self, or your mind.

Could as well call it your flesh.

It’s short a wall on one side.

It gapes at the rest of life.

Words spill out of it each time

You try to tame them, stack them

In crisp, tight lists with pressed lips.

Out they spill once more. You turn

Like a lake in its bed, like

A worm in its case, like thoughts

In words of near see-through skins.