into the tides of being unsurprised    what have people of the island thrown away

as alert and undoing as the edge of the moon :: knife of my small life

clothes of old men    fatigues of soul    my persimmon tree sailing for home

my hand in wind that has lived out its life    the path between two deer

 a ginkgo leaf lifts above the sound    of those we loved being born

the kind of life i like best    the last day is astonished to find

when the white body of snow awakens    would you ask if there is hatred in its heart

the child you were whispers something forgotten    sunflowers stepping into snow

like surveyors of the original presence    ashes all come back

where sky is freshly dug and the rain is with its gray gloves on to uncovered voices listening

eating the lamp in america doesn't make it any darker

silence from her mouth white as a line no one may step over

prayer of the eye where it will die    arrow asleep in the air

who among us will hear the child who died before she could sleep

when did his bread begin to say    i can't eat your heart anymore

that the mirror grows stranger and stranger    is the name of the jail

bird at the edge of air    to find riches i didn't have

what to do next with basement and box    address of heartbeat no one can touch

when the funeral is borne away on a river    when the hope for what was lost doesn't end

hold the infant before deadened eyes :: what shall i do at the limit of the sea

how large the eyes grow when there is no sound    is the place on earth she loved

no trace of yes in water or blood    no name and no odor of wound

piano playing beneath invisible hands    as if there were dancers before there was water

soul called by name to sleep under the sea    is to end the end that is beginning

island :: bird in the memory of the first dawn    presence staring at an empty plate

this is the room where nothing is forgotten    the space of a mouth between two skins

first voice i remember was brightness coming back to be forever hungry in the moon

blood of soybeans and corn    crushed journey of all stars    only one i in ohio

saint in the subway is not sleep is not loveless    murmur without sun that lives on

centuries of my blood drink at the rim of a single empty sky

grief or bread :: how the child tried to fill the holes in her heart

between my hands where the white forests sleep    what the waters cannot sunder

as unlikely as a second dawn    as spilled blood to be misspoken    was the hand of the earth upon you

each day alive upon the island of dying    i walk the boundaries of a different sea

to write on paper cold and dark    is to dream the cross as crystal

is it light i see through a tear in translucence    or the voice i once sent forth

water pulls my hand deep into its pockets    loves the drowning i do not love

eyes of the dead finally open and open    each  knot in the moon untied

flood is for the rescue of something held over our heads    then mud turning back into children

in colors opposed to color    in the garden of a smothered hand    she painted her windows open

a simple word bleeding, wrapped in a shroud    the sky as barefoot as birds

in the long silence of the lie is the child you first loved forcing his ashes to sing

no laurel could touch me while the poet was living when God was the odor of the moon

murmur of a wave whose body is bleeding :: what i see beyond the end of the rose

we know what is coming is no more closed than the blade lying in bed beside me

the way home keeps changing its face until i have no life that hasn't started to live

bending against the snow that falls from God    nothing else can be so still

the awful defeat of a little town    is a wind or a star inside me

where the other face of night is looking    is to be kissed by what the young poet saw

in the sands of the moon a dream horse roams    thus i had no model for life