It is an omen of an open door,
a fear no longer found in the wind.
Are there unions only the earth sees?
The birches live where no one else comes,
deep in the unworried woods . . .
These sand grains looked at by deer bellies.
LETTER TO HER
What I did I did.
I knew that I loved you
and told you that.
Then I lied to you
often so you would love me,
hid the truth,
shammed, lied.
Once human beings
in their way do what they do
they find peakéd
castles ahead, they see
lanterns aloft over
the seal-like masses
where they love at night.
The hurricane carries
off the snail, still
clinging to his pine
tree. At night the o-
possum sees the golden
lion upside
down in his dream.
To do what we do
does not mean joy. The sun
rises, and some-
thing strong guides the sun
over the sky until
it carries its spark down
to the northern forests.
TWO PEOPLE AT DAWN
The sun orange and rose
lights up covers and clouds.
Her head lies in his lap.
And his hand curves round
the bone box of her head.
Odor of candles
floats in the room.
He says, “Our river flows
on a black mud bottom.
Are we walking there?
Are we underwater?”
“We are under the ocean.”
“Ah well,” he says, “the ocean
is only a slow river.”
His hand remains firm.
Her courage shines
the whole length of her body.
The man joins her
in that briny place
where cattle graze
on grass below the water.
WINTER POEM
The quivering wings of the winter ant
Wait for lean winter to end.
I love you in slow, dim-witted ways,
Hardly speaking, one or two words only.
What caused us each to live hidden?
A wound, the wind, a word, a parent.
Sometimes we wait in a helpless way,
Awkwardly, not whole and not healed.
When we hid the wound, we fell back
From a human to a shelled life.
Now we feel the ant’s hard chest,
The carapace, the silent tongue.
This must be the way of the ant,
The winter ant, the way of those
Who are wounded and want to live:
To breathe, to sense another, and to wait.
IN RAINY SEPTEMBER
In rainy September, when leaves grow down into the dark,
I put my forehead down to the damp, seaweed-smelling sand.
The time has come. I have put off choosing for years,
Perhaps whole lives. The fern has no choice but to live;
For this crime it receives earth, water, and night.
We close the door. “I have no claim on you.” Dusk
Comes. You say, “The love I have had with you is enough.”
We know we could live apart from one another.
The sheldrake floats apart from the flock.
The oak tree puts out leaves alone on the lonely hillside.
Men and women before us have accomplished this.
I would see you, and you me, once a year.
We would be two kernels, and not be planted.
We stay in the room, door closed, lights out.
I weep with you without shame and without honor.
THE THIRD BODY
A man and a woman sit near each other, and they do not long
At this moment to be older, or younger, or born
In any other nation, or any other time, or any other place.
They are content to be where they are, talking or not-talking.
Their breaths together feed someone whom we do not know.
The man sees the way his fingers move;
He sees her hands close around a book she hands to him.
They obey a third body that they share in common.
They have promised to love that body.
Age may come; parting may come; death will come!
A man and a woman sit near each other;
As they breathe they feed someone we do not know,
Someone we know of, whom we have never seen.
TWO MIDDLE-AGED LOVERS
An Etching by Dürer
The man and the woman linger under a tree,
Soberly, standing near his horse.
Man and woman hear the low muttering speech
Instinct makes to instinct.
Their canoe shoots down the narrow channel;
The climber goes rock by rock up the mountainside.
The yaks, hair blowing, disappear into the storm.
FINDING SHARKS’ TEETH IN A ROCK
The cabin of the early snail swerves and falls
through miles of murky stuff, and the shark, turning,
swerves, one fin working, finally settles,
joins the rock, serves. When I strike it hard,
teeth delicate as black kites fall out!
So it is, has been. Sharks’ teeth glitter
in the light of the old moon. It was to her
the Chaldean horns shot out their cry at dawn,
mingling our uneasy cries with the containing rocks.
II
THE ROOTS
Finally in the bear’s cabin I come to earth.
There are limits. Among all the limits
We know so few things. How is it that I know
Only one river—its turns—and one woman?
The love of woman is the knowing of grief.
There are no limits to grief. The loving man
Simmers his porcupine stew. Among the tim-
Ber growing on earth grief finds roots.
WHAT FRIGHTENED US
Drops of rain fall into black fields.
Leaves fallen on the highway remain
where they fall, and resist the wind.
A power neither of us knows has spoken to us.
All night rain came in. We had descended
yesterday to some inner, or innermost cave,
and this—as we woke today with faces wet
from overnight rain—frightens us a little.
Smoke of rain lifts from gravel roads.
Rainwater gathers below the barns.
Other waters slowly join in woods.
Silent in the moonlight, no beginning or end.
SEEING YOU CARRY PLANTS IN
How much I love you. The night is moist.
The air is still, as when I love you.
It is not every evening that I love you.
I come back like the stars, sometimes out of clouds.
The night is moist, and nourishing as your mind
that lets everything around you live.
I saw you carry the plants inside tonight
over the grass, to save them from the cold.
Sometimes I slip behind a door, so that
I will not be called on, or walk
hunched on sandbars below earth, not sure
if anyone in my family can love.
Your voice is water open beneath stars,
collected from abundant rain, gone to low places.
The night is moist, the ground wet,
air still, trees silent, and tonight I love you.
THE TWO RIVERS
Inside us there is a river born in the good cold
that longs to give itself
to the Gulf of light.
And there is another river more like the Missouri
that carries earth, and earth joys, and the earthly.
COME WITH ME
We walk together in willows, among willows.
The cowrie shell has its rosy mouth;
the tree nods and rises;
the conch returns to the dark waters.
Come with me, we will walk alone,
away from the buildings and the high places.
I love to go with you,
and enter the valley where no one is king.
AT MIDOCEAN
All day I loved you in a fever, holding on to the tail of the horse.
I overflowed whenever I reached out to touch you.
My hand moved over your body, covered
with its dress,
burning, rough, an animal’s foot or hand moving over leaves.
The rainstorm retires, clouds open, sunlight
sliding over ocean water a thousand miles from land.
IN THE TIME OF PEONY BLOSSOMING
When I come near the red peony flower
I tremble as water does near thunder,
As the well does when the plates of earth move,
Or the tree when fifty birds leave at once.
The peony says that we have been given a gift,
And it is not the gift of this world.
Behind the leaves of the peony
There is a world still darker, that feeds many.
NIGHT FROGS
I wake and find myself in the woods, far from the castle.
The train hurtles through lonely Louisiana at night.
The sleeper turns to the wall, delicate
aircraft dive toward earth.
A woman whispers to me, urges me to speak truths.
“I am afraid that you won’t be honest with me.”
Half or more of the moon rolls on in shadow.
Owls talk at night, loons wheel cries through lower waters.
Hoof marks turn up—something with hooves tramples
the grasses while the horses are asleep.
A shape flat and four feet long slips under the door
and lies exhausted on the floor in the morning.
When I look back, there is a blind spot in the car.
What is it in my father I keep not noticing?
I cannot remember years of my childhood.
Some parts of me I cannot find now.
I intended that; I threw some parts of me away
at ten; others at twenty; a lot at twenty-eight.
I wanted to thin myself out as a wire is thinned.
Is there enough left of me now to be honest?
The lizard moves stiffly over November roads.
How much I am drawn toward my parents! I walk back
and forth, looking toward the old landing.
Night frogs give out the croak of the planet turning.
THE MARCH BUDS
They lie on the bed, hearing music.
The perfumed pillow, the lake, a woman’s laughter.
Wind blows faintly, touches the March buds.
The young trees sway back and forth.
THE TURTLE
Rain lifts the lake level, washing the reeds.
Slowly the milkweed pods open, the yellow lily pads.
Through the mist man and woman see the far shore.
The turtle’s head rises out over the water.
SUCH DIFFERENT WANTS
The board floats on the river.
The board wants nothing
but is pulled from beneath
on into deeper waters.
And the elephant dwelling
on the mountain wants
a trumpet so its dying cry
can be heard by the stars.
The wakeful heron striding
through reeds at dawn wants
the god of sun and moon
to see his long skinny neck.
You must say what you want.
I want to be the man
and I am who will love you
when your hair is white.
FERNS
It was among ferns I learned about eternity.
Below your belly there is a curly place.
Through you I learned to love the ferns on that bank,
and the curve the deer’s hoof leaves in sand.
THE HUMMINGBIRD VALLEY
I love to come near the hummingbird valley,
that place where we have played so often.
It is a garden where the night-hummingbirds live,
hovering in the night on fast wings.
Hills on each side close in that garden,
immaculate as the mouse’s fur;
there the hummingbirds come to the plum trees,
and the plums lie about on the darkening earth.
Isn’t it a house? It has been a house to me.
The cantor waits to enter the synagogue—
chanting of the Babylonian masses.
And with what interest I hear the hummingbird listening
to words about to be spoken for the first time.
They bless all the hummingbirds, and they bless this house
where we first exchanged salt and bread together.
LOVE POEM IN TWOS AND THREES
What kind of people
are these? Some stammer
of land, some
want nothing but light—
no house or land
thrown away for a woman,
no ample recklessness.
How much I need
a woman’s soul, felt
in my own knees,
shoulders and hands.
I was born sad!
I am a northern goat
of winter light,
up to my knees in snow.
Standing by you, I am
glad as the clams
at high tide, eerily
content as the amorous
ocean owls.
RETURNING POEM
Men bring the boat at night inside its slanted house by the shore;
goats return when the farmer calls them to their earth-barn at night.
Brothers, working on different farms, go home after dark
and sleep together at last in the attic room under its slanting roof.
And the deer returns, finding her way through woods to her curving grass.
At night the man goes to the bus to meet the woman he loves—
it has only been a day—and impatiently brings her home.
So what was far out into the air, and the longitudes of the earth
is brought home, taken in, a place prepared in the chest,
and the mountain loon returns, and soon is asleep in the mountain lake.
THE RAM
The ram walks over the minty grass.
The hawk ruffles his shoulder feathers.
Two chooks sit with feathers overlapping.
Just before dark big snowflakes fall.
NIGHT WINDS
Night winds sway the lilacs near the abandoned woodshed.
I am alone now; trees dark; the time for heroes is over.
Night winds pull me out; I am pulled away from day;
I float in the current, calm and mad as a sleepy cork.
All afternoon, lying on a hill of kisses and fever,
we felt winds around us, below us, above us,
holding us where we want to be, and I live now
surrounded by those swirls as an island by smoky water.
I sway like the branches, and do not choose the motion.
I am faithful as the ant with his small waist.
What do heroes and Hercules mean to me now?
I will remain here; you will find me where you left me.
ALONE A FEW HOURS
Today I was alone a few hours, and slowly
windows darkened, leaving me alon
e, naked,
with no father or uncle,
born in no country . . . I was a streak of light
through the sky,
a trail in the snow behind the field mouse,
a thing that has
simple desires, and one
or two needs, like a barn darkened by rain.
Something enters from the open window.
I sense it, and turn slightly
to the left. Then I notice
shadows are dear to me, shadows in the weeds
near the lake,
and under the writing table where I sit
writing this.
“The hermit is not here;
he is up on the mountain picking ferns.”
That’s what the hermit’s boy told the visitor
looking for him. Then I realize that I do love,
at last, that the simple
joy of the field mouse has come to me.
I am no longer
a stone pile visited from below
by the old ones.
“It’s misty up there . . .
I don’t know where he is . . . I don’t think you can find him.”
THE MOOSE