Poetry 365

I give you now Professor Twist,
A conscientious scientist.
Trustees exclaimed, “He never bungles!”
And sent him off to distant jungles.
Camped on a tropic riverside,
One day he missed his loving bride.
She had, the guide informed him later
Been eaten by an alligator.
Profesor Twist could not but smile.
“You mean,” he said, “a crocodile.”

The woods are green, the path winds
through blackberries.

You dream of his hands on your thigh,
you dream of his hands on your neck.

You follow
a narrow path, can’t smell
him up ahead, the bear, nose
deep in arbutus.

But always his breath
on your throat, his hand, his mouth.

You will eat the blackberried, listen
for the tremble of clear water
on mica-flecked rock.

You dream a cataract, an edge. But the bear prowls and eats
on the far side of the river.

After if rains you should sigh a little for the spongy world.
You should listen to the fish gasping in the underbrush
and the duck’s heart beating twenty yards away.
When the music arrives you should let it take you back across the river
into the kitchens where the clean hands are linked.
You should lie on the stones underneath the cold waterfall
and let you fingers drift hopelessly through the foam.
You should float slowly past the row of barking dogs
and visit the silent opossum in his grotto.
You should go to sleep between the sobs of the 9 o’clock local on the Jersey side
and the whines of Sea-Land and Roadway on the Pennsylvania.

I want to give myself
utterly
as this maple
that burned and burned
for three days without stinting
and then in two more
dropped off every leaf;
as this lake that,
no matter what comes
to its green-blue depths,
both takes and returns it.
In the still heart,
that refuses nothing,
the world is twice-born—
two earths wheeling,
two heavens,
two egrets reaching
down into subtraction;
even the fish
for an instant doubled,
before it is gone.
I want the fish.
I want the losing it all
when it rains and I want
the returning transparence.
I want the place
by the edge-flowers where
the shallow sand is deceptive,
where whatever
steps in must plunge,
and I want that plunging.
I want the ones
who come in secret to drink
only in early darkness,
and I want the ones
who are swallowed.
I want the way
the water sees without eyes,
hears without ears,
shivers without will or fear
at the gentlest touch.
I want the way it
accepts the cold moonlight
and lets it pass,
the way it lets
all of it pass
without judgment or comment.
There is a lake,
Lalla Ded sand, no larger
than on seed of mustard,
that all things return to.
O heart, if you
will not, cannot, give me the lake
then give me the song.

To see them coming headstrong
battering the air
home to Goldilocks and three chairs
three bowls of porridge
three beds
taking the steps three at a time
barging into the rooms
this is what I grew up on
three bears with nothing to do
no terror of woods     each with
a small anger toward usurpers
that easy knowledge of something
taken and not returned
something broken and not fixed
something pressed
in which the hump still lay

Now years later I love them for what
they are
the common stutter of their fears
the worse stutter of their deeds
capable of being neighbors
capable of running for a short ways
essentially speechless
their fur hooked by thorns
wearing shabby coats
and passing in the street
sometimes glad to greet me
sometimes afraid to meet me with their eyes

So this is excellence: movement
toward the barely possible—
the puma’s dream
of running down a hummingbird
on a grassy plain.

Birds in a whirl, drift to the rooftops
Kite dip, swing to the seabank fogroll
Form: dots in air changing line from line, the future defined.
Brush back smoke from the eyes, dust from the mind,
With the wing-feather fan of an eagle.
A hawk drifts into the far sky.
A marmot whistles across huge rocks.
Rain on the California hills.
Mussels clamp to sea-boulders
Sucking the Spring tides

Rain soaks the tan stubble
Fields full of ducks

Rain sweeps the Eucalyptus
Strange pines on the coast needles two to the bunch
The whole sky whips in the wing
Vaux Swifts
Flying before the storm
Arcing close hear sharp wing-whistle
Sickle-bird
     pale gray
     sheets of rain slowly shifting
     down from the clouds,
Black swifts.
     —the swift cry
As they shoot by, See or go blind!

1.
For months this feeling
has been coming closer
like a shy guest
till now he stands before me,
openly, twirling
his hat in his hand.

2.
I welcome him in,
knowing he carries
truth in his hatband
and stuffed in his pockets.
Here are the words
I’ve been running from,
I who have grown deliberately
blind.

3.
I look at the jumble
of my desk; the papers spill
in all directions. The phone
almost seems to leap
as it rings and rings.
I say the same words
over and over,
until I am nearly screaming.

4.
The office moves forward
in stops and starts
like an old, defective motor.
I write grants and memos
even in my sleep; make lists
of things to be done, of words
I should have said. Despair,
with its fine gray dust, coats
my hair.

5.
I dream of winning the lottery.
Of escape. In my office,
the window doesn’t open,
and there is no door. By 10 a.m.
my voice has broken edges
sharper than my teeth. “The better
to eat you with,” cries the wolf,
and another day vanishes.

6.
I pray for salvation, looking
for the one who will save me.
I start at the space
between two tall shelves
that serves as a door.The guest,
in a suit two sizes too small,
stands just inside the space
and grins.

7.
At night, I dream of a billboard.
The message, in large orange letters,
reads: “Save yourself.”
In the morning, patient as a stone,
I begin.

Time will say nothing but I told you so,
Time only knows the price we have to pay;
If I could tell you I would let you know.

If we should weep when clowns put on their show,
If we should stumble when musicians play,
Time will say nothing but I told you so.

There are no fortunes to be told, although,
Because I love you more than I can say,
If I could tell you I would let you know.

The winds must come from somewhere when they blow,
There must be reasons why the leaves decay;
Time will say nothing but I told you so.

Perhaps the roses really want to grow,
The vision seriously intends to stay;
If I could tell you I would let you know.

Suppose the lions all get up and go,
And all the brooks and soldiers run away;
Will Time say nothing but I told you so?
If I could tell you I would let you know.

it is best
to focus your eyes
a little off to one side;
it is better to know things
drained of their color, to fathom
the black horses cropping
at winter grass,
their white jaws that move
in steady rotation, a sweet sound.

And when they file off to shelter
under the trees
you will find the dark circles of snow
pushed aside, earth opening
its single, steadfast gaze:
towards stars ticking by, one by one, overhead,
the given world flaming precisely out of its frame.