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.