can earth save poetry. are valleys

opened when leaves are quoted.

when sky is windless and word is wind.

 

water pulls my secret deep into

its pockets. loves the drowning i do not

love. where the words that won't let me write survive.

 

every moon in old clothes finds its way

to my room. every scar learning the way of shadow.

we stand together. arrayed like sunflowers. facing the void.

 

the horse comes back alone. but there is 

no alone. no empty bed. no love that is not 

pain. no time to perfect one's art. no horse.

 

small lake. long journey of sky.

sky that sang at the birth of time...

of a blue eye. of a beautiful day.

 

rain stands alone in the field. after

the wedding. after the ladder i once climbed.

without leaving a trace. before the door of god.

 

when i find you you no longer

have age. one who is yet to come.

hole in the sky with mists and cliffs. pathless.

 

i kneel to drink. drink your face

from the wind. distant. clear.

sleep in the pastures outside your train.

 

dawn. the blouse of the sky

spreads open. your ear soft

against the mouth of my blood.

 

space in the attic was the source of hush.

then heat, then hands. ages of dust fell from those hands.

dew upon a faultless mountain.

 

sunlight is a room where nothing

is forgotten. a gate left open.

poems one would be glad to have written.

 

i see the child grieve in her mother's waters.

cracked basin. skeleton earth. rainbows

above the weak should end in iron. not gold.

 

like a red corpuscular heart. like the swim

in a midnight harbor. with the strength of curved lines.

spirals. i saw the rings of saturn.

 

who is ironweed. is the holy

motive of wildflower. green begins to rain

inside chrysalis. and within rain's iron interiority. a torch.

 

may your voice be the cord that

lowers my heart. through foam and stone.

into the flow of the ancient green.

 

the blue hills open a window.

i greet the poem with calloused hands.

silence ticking in the walls.

 

our few possessions are weighed leaving the bus.

some clothes, a few toiletries. all we will have.

whether dying forward. whether living back.

 

we stand at the edge of drowning.

the water is small. familiar and unknowingly

deep. silent fish slip through the night around us.

 

the path opens between the eyes of a deer.

a child discovers his infinite sky.

my hands stroke a wind that has lived out its life.

 

nothing raked the wind. no cry

split the trees. until

what was born fell silent.

 

rusts and weaknesses pool in low

lonely places. where i thought water would listen.

to the mouth of every sigh.

 

not to know stones are alive, i

could not converse with silence.

my shadow would rest.

 

death will remove its shoes. and

the heart begin its return migration

alone. walking on water. breathing stone.

 

the small poem :: knife of brief life

 

another world's end.

dimensions of the box:

silence by silence by silence.

 

lift up the sheet where

sleep spills its blood.

ferns drip in the shade.

 

huge blue wings rise, fly. flow away.

listen and hear nothing.

lake unhurried. clouds fully awake.

 

such turmoil in dreams! so many

souls unliving! psyche's cauldron brewing

ashes, a beginning....

 

we begin our heart        with one wing

 

a tree of singular stature towers

above an unpitying field. my shadow. 

a mask. with eyes like small wet stones.

 

a hand reaches down, delivers

a postcard from heaven—

carrara marble, stigmata, 1964 world's fair.

 

poets with poets wafting from their mouths—

what's really going on...

my warped flame dances with the dark one's heart.

 

inside the dying of the apple tree

forests shed old rain.

the house of souls stands like haze.

 

sunlight grows lovingly across the ceiling

for the eyes of the infant lying on his back.

the stone i have struggled with finds its place at last.

 

lie down in fire. side with

the defeated. twist the 

sublime and ubiquitous spiral.

 

a deep hole opens in my shadow—

a black umbrella turned to ash.

the breath of one risen from the dead climbs out.

 

first we open newly fashioned eyes.

then we climb with limbs of light

the tree, the branch, the fallen flower.

 

late day. four panes

of rippled glass. sun and self exhausted

by the weight of the task.

 

doorway of the morning i love :: that you bring me back in

 

sweet work, to :: think in songs

 

she is older than when she died.

grandmother is.

i worry she may fall going down the stairs.

 

the child you were whispers something unheard...

i've sown the seed of a galaxy!

sunflowers are stepping into snow!

 

what to do with the box in the basement.

childhood searches for an answer.

moonlight sings on the skin of a breeze.

 

in some lives, windows sleep.

they hide death in yesterday's breeze,

bury silence in a forest of wounded trees.

 

i don't want new songs with old knees.

learn. listen.

            where burns the fog one must become.

 

peak of summer, firewood mosaic

stacked piece by piece.

the only shelter near, snow white clouds.

 

one can heal

and another is healed by being wounded.

death stands some souls up on their feet.

 

when i was different

hummingbirds stood in mid-air, stared in.

we are living it again.

 

horses lie down beside me, one nuzzles my back.

dream life. july.

strawberries feed from my hands.

 

from whether.com

grievous heat is the asphalt forecast

skies are to remain emaciated by self doubt

while the outlook for death, terminally obese, is congestive failure of heart

 

by what thread will i spin when the sun unravels

will the last of my bodies fly away with the geese

knowing your purpose is the fall of rain

                                                                        how gently can you live

 

another ocean

but the same helpless island.

choice vanishes into a willow at dusk. rain rolls in.

 

a monotonous ferry ride

to stand alone in the wind

waiting for the beginning.

 

the first dawn is too small to wake the soul.

but an island emerges.

eyes reopen.

 

bullets of rain.

children will try to fill the holes in their sky.

basement world, weeping walls.

 

whose gospel has left my heart unread.

whose sun

shall speak my eyes.

 

before wisdom comes

we know

hands and trees shall be broken

 

millions of light years

of one bottomless dream

watches over my sleep

 

new prints in the forest clay.

cumulus builds a sky.

whose shadow goes slipping away.

 

the audience calls out a name

the name dies instantly, cries to god

is made flesh, bleeds, dies

joins the audience, calls out a name

i will know it

    outside the dream

when it comes

    behind the calm

because it breathes

 

sunset.

because i can die i am living.

everyone i love but do not know opening in the wind.

 

corn and clover.

where am i going...

the secret never arrives.

 

untied from its willows

the river dies.

stars graze on time in the desert sky.

 

gathered the freedom

to be an anchor

wandering among the waves.

 

restoring the egg to its skimpy nest :: gently closing its eye

 

can you sew me a pocket :: filled with answers and doves

 

stepped into life's water

stone without skin

felt for the first time cold winds

 

peace to the death

which becomes a rose

peace to the heart

which greens you

 

our music preserves the echo :: of stones washing the sea

 

the sky you awakened in the eyes of the rain :: holds the moon the night and the reason to remain

 

let wild seed wake before the rains grow old :: before the moon is shut out of your heart

 

washing my poetry i sweeten the sea :: until the green of your island is saved

 

moon sheds moon

opens an infinite eye

the risk of being reborn throbs through the sky

 

to be water that has not found a well

            to die young

                        fallen from a cloud

 

if there is a gate it will be left open

if there is a border may the dead guide you over

the road follows where you go

 

birth was a drama that one member of the cast does not remember

 

soul

not substance but naked 

            —voice in a mirror with tiny cracks —

where the other face of night is looking

             —kissed by what the poet sees —

resisting all that falls from god

             —nothing else can be so still

 

just enough darkness to forest the world :: then light dawns in one leaf

 

last drops of rain in hands of a breeze    stirring what others need

 

in the throb beneath a drop of blood :: i feel my wounds at war

 

in the oar i've abandoned i long for the sea

 

when its suffering's washed away :: what remains of clay

 

let's awake in the garden others can't see

            naked as the moon turning dust to dream

 

does water remember the child in its arms bleeding his beautiful pearls of breath

 

there is sky in my arrow :: there is no path to my sky

 

can you remember the touch of your hand as it gave you the power to heal

 

is memory the only place the dead are given light to see

 

shooting star with the strangest ending :: eyes of the living

 

hands unravel

wheelbarrow topples

soul rejoices in flame

 

shapes created by the gods of pine—

             ships on a cliff

             a cross without arms

 

on which side of my skin is sky

 

i dream of hundreds of broken windows

and of she who reveals

the stone in my heart

 

will there be a brief moment, infinite,

            to take this in—

i have gone the great distance bound in one skin

 

singing to be alone and not alone        sweep sweep my aging path

 

how the cave where we could see really see there are openings

became the star

i hold inside

 

how strange that nowhere should be nearby :: like the wound in my sip of wine

 

my sun is not substance but naked :: to the infinite shadows of light

 

dead wood beautiful failures

forgotten rains

the light that leads my way

 

there are days windows sleep

            there are days when death hides in yesterday's breeze

why is silence peaceful in a forest of wounded trees