You sing, and your voice peels the husk of the day's grain, your song with the sun and sky, the pine trees speak with their green tongue: all the birds of the winter whistle. The sea fills its cellar with footfalls, with bells, chains, whimpers, the tools and the metals jangle, wheels of the caravan creak. But I hear only your voice, your voice soars with the zing and precision of an …
Poetry
Reunion
Reunion When I had finally had enough of my own endless, uncreative complaints, I made my promise to do better. I turned around. I journeyed backward for millions of miles and millions of years into the end of miles and years to retrieve these words for you: You must be the one to do or undo whatever it takes to remember and activate your own furiously prolific heart, and your …
Acrobat’s Song
Acrobat's Song Who is it for whom we now perform, Cavorting on wire: For whom does the boy Climbing the ladder Balance and whirl— For whom, Seen or unseen In a shield of light? Seen or unseen, In a shield of light, At the tent top Where the rays stream in Watching the pin-wheel Turns of the players Dancing in the light: Lady, We are Thy …
Particles For A Coverlet
Translation We trekked into a far country, My friend and I. Our deeper content was never spoken, But each knew all the other said. He told me how calm his soul was laid By the lack of anvil and strife. “The wooing kestrel,” I said, “mutes his mating-note To please the harmony of this sweet silence.” And when at the day’s end We laid tired bodies ’gainst The loose warm sands, And the …
Axioms
Axioms for Wildness Alive to the thrill Of the wild. Meet the dawn On a mountain. Wash your face In the morning dew. Feel the favor of the earth. Go out naked in the wind, Your skin Almost Aeolian. With the music inside, Dance like there is no outside. Become subtle enough To hear a tree breathe. Sleep by the ocean, Letting yourself unfurl Like the reeds that …
Instead
Lily No one would take her when Ruth passed. As the survivors assessed some antiques, I kept hearing, "She's old. Somebody should put her down." I picked her up instead. Every night I tell her about the fish who died for her, the ones in the cheerful aluminum cans. She lies on my chest to sleep, rising and falling, rising and falling like a rowboat fastened to a battered dock by a …