us
There is a glow about you
I have meant to see sometimes
from the corner of my face
looking at you on the sly.
What is it exactly
that you have compressed into a thing so small
as I?
We are well trod and practiced at being uniformly
nothing; and less: an us;
shod like horses; trained to excuses;
steered by the bits of iron in our mouths.
Our biblical truths disgust
and digest us.
Our every nod is a lie; says
"Of course; of course." Damn our "of courses."
Look at my eye,
its reflection
of You
as big as a huntress moon
still floating by day of a June or July.
I will see you always surrounded
by a summer haze
of blue-white sky
resting atop the backs of horses.
(from Uncollected Poems)
Let My Words Be Food For Gods
Let my words be food for gods.
Let them be for apples in the cracked hands
of succulence after thirst;
for the dripping tongues of dogs
in dreams of labor in the shade
beneath the warbling birds.
Let them bring platter on platter from the brown hands of maids
in suggestion of immortality gained
by the sting and the blood of long slender blades,
followed by feathers and palm fronds fanning
a drowsy eyelid squawking at the sun.
Let them sing where all have trod;
through what laborious fields
and long ordeals
through barbed-wire runs
beyond the tongues of stuttering guns;
let them say
where all have gone, and slipped their chains,
and come up angry out of graves.
And if I
have sometimes sat through sermons unafraid;
amused myself where others knelt and prayed,
ashamed;
and if I have sometimes raged against them all,
fist and elbows to a wall,
insisting upon my own significance;
if I have sometimes lived in basements, small;
and again have towered over cloudy Judgements
many heavens tall:
Let my words be grain for all;
bare images
sprouting from the plains where heads have lain
and cattle call
and grasses grow up straight without a name.
(from Uncollected Poems)
Imagine
Imagine heaven as a state of mind,
and the arrow of time is irrelevant.
Who points here and there
in avoidance of keeping a promise
is an idiot:
The eyes tell their own story.
Lips are vagrant.
The tongue hides
like a turtle's tail.
And the warrior sun circles
round and round
in the dust of its own chariot.
Between you and me
and the rest of the world,
the secret to keeping a moment alive
is to see the kingdom of
possibilities in it.
Leave nothing outside.
Start with Pride.
Stride.
Stride.
Stride.
And always remember:
A sentence begins and ends
with the same period.
(from Uncollected Poems)
And A Cloud Brings Rain
Love is such a puny word
for so much praise.
It hardly leaves my tongue,
my face;
falls like a lugnut in the mud;
and I feel ashamed.
Water on the highway splutters and dumps
buckets until my hair dies hanging
crucified on the hillside
of my divine disgrace.
Every passing motorist is an eyeball witness
gazing long; windshield wipers
hang their tongues like tired dogs;
and love is standing there with folded arms.
How curious,
having thought to save a stranded tourist
standing so dejected in the rain:
and such a pretty little image to a passing sponge
of a brain; but I confess:
I am only so-so mechanically inclined,
and the rain
can be relentless.
(from Uncollected Poems)
Pretending to Be a Fly
Every spider is an artist,
more or less.
It takes a Mind
to spin a web,
with no help from a scientist
And I confess,
it would take a bird
to teach me
how to build a nest.
A beaver,
knowing nothing of its university,
comprehends an architecture
nonetheless.
And I,
a beastly creature
and a delicate thinker,
with pen poised over my own designs,
pretending to be a fly,
must get about my business
with the rest.
Let come what fortune
or what disaster,
it takes some kind of start
to be a master.
(from Uncollected Poems)
Undiminished
Tonight is for fire
and blackened stones.
For the bringing on of stars by campfire light,
and the anger of sparks let go like crazy bees
into the beards of hemlock trees.
A weakening moon will be here soon,
is trying to stand up straight, still
fat with child:
an effulgent light, undiminished,
like a lantern flung in the trees igniting
a slap in the face of night.
Cold chills milling in the air from the lake steeping
deeping into ancient evening
wrap around the arms and breathe out drunken treaties,
and cedar kindling burns the face,
fierce and friendly.
A frenzy of war-thoughts,
mean and stingy, are suddenly
standing up too tall between bundling blankets
of old mens' bones wrapped in mumbling
that meant to speak up loud for peace,
but sit there chewing on strips of beef.
Let the young thoughts have their say,
like thin sticks crackling and burning
where orange embers of old logs lay:
old mens' thoughts are for old men's keeping.
They build on one another like stones making;
but smoke is twisting, and in your eyes:
Go away!
Tonight is for the unafraid;
for looking to shadows cast by leaping flames,
and fingers of pharaohs aimed like arrows
teaching the children to remember
that stars have names;
are distant relations.
And now the night is a crazy horse,
and the headlights of a car with a gruff engine
are throwing the shadows of trees all around
in coming out late from the city
to a campsite reservation.
Tomorrow will be nothing left
but the ash of reason;
shafts
of mountain sunlight dusting
the very tops of trees without a season.
(from Uncollected Poems)
Rendering to Caesar
My gilded estate
has no porticoes and pillows;
no nameplate
clasped in the claws of lions;
no marble or bronze,
or sprawling lawns;
no sprinklers timed to wake up late.
My estate is but a breadth of golden light
on sudden intake
when I am falling backward into faith
in arms
strong as promise
given
by unblinking eyes
and lips of slate.
My estate is granite.
It is the realm of some god whose gaze
I equate with the rush of a river
and I
am standing half-way in it,
divine in my own right,
wet with fright,
and crossed by the current.
Sovereignty,
after all these hard and trying years,
is just a word:
My estate is senate.
(from Uncollected Poems)
