in knowing your name,
little Wilson’s Warbler
yellow as a lemon, with a smooth, black cap.
Just do what you do and don’t worry, dipping
branch by branch down to the fountain
to sip neatly, then flutter away.
A name
is not a leash.
In Provincetown, and Ohio, and Alabama
Death taps his black wand and something vanishes. Summer,
winter; the thickest branch of an oak tree for which I have a
special love; three just hatched geese. Many trees and thickets of
catbrier as bulldozers widen the bicycle path. The violets down
by the old creek, the flow itself now raveling forward through
an underground tunnel.
Lambs that, only recently, were gamboling in the field. An old
mule, in Alabama, that could take no more of anything. And
then, what follows? Then spring again, summer, and the season
of harvest. More catbrier, almost instantly rising. (No violets,
ever, or song of the old creek.) More lambs and new green grass
in the field, for their happiness until. And some kind of yellow
flower whose name I don’t know (but what does that matter?)
rising around and out of the half-buried, half-vulture-eaten,
harness-galled, open-mouthed (its teeth long and blackened),
breathless, holy mule.
April
I wanted to speak at length about
the happiness of my body and the
delight of my mind for it was
April, night, a
full moon and—
but something in myself or maybe
from somewhere other said: not too
many words, please, in the
muddy shallows the
frogs are singing.
Torn
I tore the web
of a black and yellow spider
in the brash of weeds
and down she came
on her surplus of legs
each of which
touched me and really
the touch wasn’t much
but then the way
if a spider can
she looked at me
clearly somewhere between
outraged and heartbroken
made me say “I’m sorry
to have wrecked your home
your nest your larder”
to which she said nothing
only for an instant
pouched on my wrist
then swung herself off
on the thinnest of strings
back into the world.
This pretty, this perilous world.
Wind in the Pines
Is it true that the wind
streaming especially in fall
through the pines
is saying nothing, nothing at all,
or is it just that I don’t yet know the language?
The Living Together
The spirit says:
What gorgeous clouds.
The body says: Good,
the crops need rain.
The spirit says:
Look at the lambs frolicking.
The body says:
When’s the feast?
The spirit says:
What is the lark singing about?
The body says:
Maybe it’s angry.
The spirit says:
I think shadows are trying to say something.
The body says:
I know how to make light.
The spirit says:
My heart is pounding.
The body says:
Take off your clothes.
The spirit says: Body,
how can we live together?
The body says: Bricks and mortar
and a back door.
We Cannot Know
Now comes Schumann down the scale.
What a river
of pleasure!
Where is his riven heart?
His ruined mind?
Lying in wait.
Now comes Schumann up the scale
and around the curly corners
of just a few absolutely right notes
while the Rhine turges along,
while the Rhine sparkles in the dark,
lying in wait.
The Poet Dreams of the Mountain
Sometimes I grow weary of the days, with all their fits and starts.
I want to climb some old gray mountain, slowly, taking
the rest of my lifetime to do it, resting often, sleeping
under the pines or, above them, on the unclothed rocks.
I want to see how many stars are still in the sky
that we have smothered for years now, a century at least.
I want to look back at everything, forgiving it all,
and peaceful, knowing the last thing there is to know.
All that urgency! Not what the earth is about!
How silent the trees, their poetry being of themselves only.
I want to take slow steps, and think appropriate thoughts.
In ten thousand years, maybe, a piece of the mountain will fall.
Mist in the Morning, Nothing Around Me
but Sand and Roses
Was I lost? No question.
Did I know where I was? Not at all.
Had I ever been happier in my life? Never.
The Last Word About Fox (Maybe)
Where is the fox now?
Somewhere, doing his life’s work, which is
living his life.
How many more foxes has he made for the earth?
Many, many.
How many rabbits has he caught so far?
Many, many, many.
This doesn’t sound very important.
What’s of importance? Scalping mountains
or fishing for oil?
I would argue about that.
Ah, you have never heard of the meek and what is
to become of them?
What’s meek about eating rabbits?
It’s better than what’s happening to the
mountains and the ocean.
You know, there’s only one thing to say. I think
you’re a little crazy.
I thank the Lord.
How Heron Comes
It is a negligence of the mind
not to notice how at dusk
heron comes to the pond and
stands there in his death robes, perfect
servant of the system, hungry, his eyes
full of attention, his wings
pure light.
When
When it’s over, it’s over, and we don’t know
any of us, what happens then.
So I try not to miss anything.
I think, in my whole life, I have never missed
the full moon
or the slipper of its coming back.
Or, a kiss.
Well, yes, especially a kiss.
Trees
Heaven knows how many
trees I climbed when my body
was still in the climbing way, how
many afternoons, especially
windy ones, I sat
perched on a limb that
rose and fell with every invisible
blow. Each tree was
a green ship in the wind-waves, every
branch a mast, every leafy height
a happiness that came without
even trying. I was that alive
and limber. Now I walk under them—
cool, beloved: the household
of such tall, kind sisters.
In Your Hands
The dog, the donkey, surely they know
they are alive.
Who would argue otherwise?
But now, after years of considera
tion,
I am getting beyond that.
What about the sunflowers? What about
the tulips, and the pines?
Listen, all you have to do is start and
there’ll be no stopping.
What about mountains? What about water
slipping over the rocks?
And, speaking of stones, what about
the little ones you can
hold in your hands, their heartbeats
so secret, so hidden it may take years
before, finally, you hear them?
I Own a House
I own a house, small but comfortable. In it is a bed, a desk,
a kitchen, a closet, a telephone. And so forth—you know
how it is: things collect.
Outside the summer clouds are drifting by, all of them
with vague and beautiful faces. And there are the pines
that bush out spicy and ambitious, although they do not
even know their names. And there is the mockingbird;
over and over he rises from his thorn-tree and dances—he
actually dances, in the air. And there are days I wish I
owned nothing, like the grass.
I Worried
I worried a lot. Will the garden grow, will the rivers
flow in the right direction, will the earth turn
as it was taught, and if not, how shall
I correct it?
Was I right, was I wrong, will I be forgiven,
can I do better?
Will I ever be able to sing, even the sparrows
can do it and I am, well,
hopeless.
Is my eyesight fading or am I just imagining it,
am I going to get rheumatism,
lockjaw, dementia?
Finally I saw that worrying had come to nothing.
And gave it up. And took my old body
and went out into the morning,
and sang.
Lark Ascending
galloped up into the morning air
then floated
a long way
whispering, I imagine,
to the same mystery
I try to speak to
down here.
And look, he is carrying something—
a little letter just light enough
for him to hold
in his yellow beak!
Look now, he is placing it
inside a cloud
and singing at the same time
joyfully, and yet
as if his heart would break.
Later, I take my weightier
but not unhappy body
into the house
I busy myself
(bury myself)
in books. But
all the while I am thinking
of the gift
of my seventy-some years
and how I would also if I could
carry a message of thanks
to the doors of the clouds.
I don’t know whether it would be
of the heart or the mind. I know
it’s the poem I have yet to make.
Don’t Hesitate
If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy,
don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty
of lives and whole towns destroyed or about
to be. We are not wise, and not very often
kind. And much can never be redeemed.
Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this
is its way of fighting back, that sometimes
something happens better than all the riches
or power in the world. It could be anything,
but very likely you notice it in the instant
when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the
case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid
of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.
In the Darkness
At night the stars
throw down
their postcards of light.
Who are they
that love me
so much?
Strangers
in the darkness—
imagine!
they have seen me
and they burn
as I too
have burned, but in
the mortal way, to which
I am totally loyal.
Still, I am grateful
and faithful
to this other romance
though we will not ever know
each others’ names,
we will not ever
touch.
Four Sonnets
1.
There appeared a darkly sparkling thing
hardly
bigger than a pin, that all afternoon
seemed
to want my company. It did me no hurt but
wandered
my shirt, my sleeve-cuff, my wrist.
Finally it opened its sheets of chitin and
flew away.
Linnaeus probably had given it a name, which I
what’s come from its home of dirt and dust
and duff, its
cinch of instinct. What does music, I wondered,
mean to it?
What the distant horizons? Still, no doubt have I
that it has some purpose, as we all have
some purpose which, though none of us
knows what it is, we each go on claiming.
Oh, distant relative, we will never speak to
each other
a single kind word. And yet, in this world, it is
no small thing to sparkle.
2.
The kingfisher hurrahs from a branch
above the river.
Under its feet is a fish that will swim
no more,
that also has its story, for another time
perhaps.
Now it’s the bird’s, pounding the fish then
hulking it down its open beak,
glad in its winning and not at all trammeled
by thought.
I keep trying to put this poem together.
Meanwhile
the bird is again gazing into the glaze
of this running food-bin. Thought does not
create the soul, not entirely, but it
plays its part.
Meanwhile the bird is flashy body and the fish
was flashy body and each
fulfills what it is, remembers little
and imagines less.
And thus the day passes into darkness
undamaged.
The fish, slippery and delicious.
The kingfisher, so quick, so blue.
3.
The authors of history are among us still.
And believe me they believe what they believe
as sincerely as the millions who are simply
looking for a life, a purpose.
Who are the good people? We are all good people
except when we are not. Meanwhile the forests
are felled, the oceans rise, storms
give off the appearance of anger. Who
despises us and for what reasons? Whom do we
despise and for what reasons? Once there was a garden
and we were sent forth from it, possibly forever.
Possibly not, possibly there is no forever.
“What’s on your mind?” we say to each other.
As though it’s some kind of weight.
4.
This morning what I am thinking of is circles:
the sun, the earth, the moon;
the life of each of us that begins then returns
to our home, the circular world,
even as in our cleverness we have invented
invention—the straight line
nothing like a leaf, or
a lake or the moon
but simply, perilously
getting by on our wits from here to there.
Einstein chalks slowly across the blackboard,
erases, writes again. Mozart flings
his fluttering notes onto the rigid staff.
The drones fly straight to any target. This morning
what I am thinking about is circles
and the straight lines that rule us
while earth abides in all sorts of splendors,
knowing its limitations. The light
of every morning curls forth,
oh beautifully, then circles toward the dark.
Obama works, prays, then grabs his scrim of sleep.
Trying to Be Thoughtful in the First Brights
of Dawn
I am thinking, or trying to think, about all the
imponderables for which we have
no answers, yet endless interest all the
range of our lives, and it’s
good for the head no doubt to undertake such
meditation; Mystery, after all,
is God’s other name, and deserves our
considerations surely. But, but—
excuse me now, please; it’s morning, heavenly bright,
and my irrepressible heart begs me to hurry on
into the next exquisite moment.
More Evidence
1.
The grosbeak sings with a completely cherishable
roughness.
The yellow and orange and scarlet trees—what do
they denote but willingness, and the flamboyance
of change?
With what words can I convince you of the
casualness with which the white swans fly?
It doesn’t matter to me if the woodchuck and
the turtle are not always, and thoughtfully,