between stone and star i have learned slowly    how on one black wing we spin

in the ear of the cry between sycamore and moon    i open all my windows

my blood is your milk filled with night

those who say there is no one to see    is where every living thing has gone

in a field full of light and death    it grows hard to see the one who will come

winter stars slip into us one by one    the skies of our vanishing grow large

within the rose who never tires    my heart gives birth to many hands

the dying sun stares into my sky as if awakening is near

a small horse leans
into her juniper tree—
no other life but sky

because i also cling to birth
this december sun
is warming

the little river is watching

            and crows that stitch the morning sky

                        and those who have died    but had eyes

dreams that visit when we are most awake :: the snow i bury underground

piece by piece    like the wood i split    to feed flames that are going blind

the inner space of snow is vast and skin—do i hear our yearnings agree?

the eye that always watches you is everywhere i dream

orchid bud swells inside

so many suns crowding the exit

i give birth to a sky that refuses to curve

what i want to say drew

its last breath—

            beheld became what can’t be changed

cut limbs falling

upon awakened ground—

            the silence that follows called wound

the driver of the chestnut mare is waiting like a friend

black cart quiet

the wind you’ve become

today we cleaned the gardens for winter
left smoking piles of disbelief
dug up a crescent moon

i hear the clatter of nothing falling

at midnight in the kitchen—

my wife wakes up, dies

sunlight weeping from her eyes

sat through the storm last night

            wondered where all that rain fell—

tight roof, sound mind, eternity chasing its tail

freshly made, i twist in the wind

            snake skin returning to an earlier molt

            the dark in a dog set to howl

a catalpa leaf bares its teeth, rakes

my face over and over

makes blood flow clear as water

i stand naked in the wind this morning

sky flies backward toward a sun

darker than light can see

like the child up in a tree

staring lost through swarming leaves

your being has entered the dream

squirrel will be killed again yesterday

there on the road—

whose future measured by the number of feeding crows

moon whimpers

harvesters slit the night

father cannot find child in the stubble of the field

the night i wasn’t conceived

still stirs the mind—

blue leaves gently coming loose

the calm face is in another country

another world—

we walk from Ohio to vote for it

the joy of motionless motion

comes after death

when you are the morning every ginkgo leaf falls

traveler sleeps late, hurries away

neighbor outside raking dreams

answer the ringing phone with imbricate possibilities

my face slides off in a November rain

swirls round the circular drain

sucked into the moon

rain before dawn

dawn ends the dream

the rain could be starlings, or not

my skin is old
thin
you can see to anywhere through it

cracks in my ceiling

close themselves to hear

footsteps of moss on the roof

when the fly on the screen

            crawled out of my eye

                        there was an entire world to build

a little sunlight travels

from nowhere outside

lies down in the gutters i clean

one leaf
will be enough
to drain all branches of wind

the act of alone
is giving birth inside me
she holds one ginkgo leaf in her hand

my silent womb
your useless wings
each life leashed to its unreal binding

she stepped into the water
a stone without skin
felt for the first time cold winds

concrete sun sinks into ruin
now my roof leaks the sorrow of light
now we must believe in the sleeping mind

just before dawn the sky is slick with ice
one could fall and die
where wild geese are dreaming

of more than can be borne
there are stains—
how else could we come to be

what belongs in the earth
has been give cold wings
not unlike birth without a sound

so i get here slowly
on footsteps half-finished
a maple leaf torn free in the blast

small light in heart
flickers to the stars
remembering for the first time it is lost

a neighbor's sweet gum tree was hollow
and those inside said they never heard more
than the barking of the moon

mother's face multiplied
in numberless drops of rain
till she knows what it is i see

a hard and difficult rain drives us outdoors
as small animals in cages
addressed to fire

four crows named Jesus fly
into a neighbor's naked maple tree—
in white skin death wraps me

i look back at my empty shoes
is how flesh
must leave the sea

brought us all to quiet without warning    no hint of eternity or dust

there is sorrow in the way we breathe :: so many suns half-dead in our hands

where my dreams cross the border    the night sky begins again

no moon hurries the dark cloud home    yet ten thousand morrows slide past

outside of sorrow and silence    not all who shine are among the alive

do we know we really never move away—but what if i close the silence

become that that cannot be returned to    lift up what's left of what the dream spoke

you've had the dream of how heaven is    now can you keep it gone forever

the way and the where of the beginning of all    you were given in last night's dream

the eye above Yellow Springs sees in his own way    that being here has nothing inside

future is memory    hunger is flesh—every day since it has rained

the final word knows    but can't tell what's coming    came from dying far away

small as the first house of soul    if small might save the world

going from death to flesh is to be numberless    thus i have come to life utterly alone

the dreamer opens and shuts like an eye    where animals are burning to sleep

because distance is sad and always of love    there is the forest we cannot lay hold of

the smallest island will come home    make nowhere far away

would it be your first howl roaming the loose wind—what makes you listen

moon is when your hands release    what the corpse leaves behind

the moon they are burning everywhere—now how much nowhere is left inside

from the other side of the light you left    are your windows heavy with snow

river reach    where trout hear me breathe    a deep to follow

inside out of echo :: mother of beings i do not know

moon undressed    the man i lost    looked at naked me

blood rising from the smoke of the man i was :: i'll be back in another memory

all things go on in the track left by dust    thus i feel where the dry country wails

when you've salted the sea and schemed what no one attains    i'll tell me who i am

the struggle to fall out of sleep    when dawn is the bed of being someone else

past the past of where i was born    is the September of wanting to take someone there

just these hands in which i cannot stop living the little good    done wrong

in marvelous silence death's seedling grows    and blinds what's hard to know

the cry being crushed is the depth of the dream no one is interested in living

work in the fog of daylight    hardly know who i am in the river of night

how the invisible can begin to hum    is what the maple in my cornfield knows

the field your dreams work knows no light until death scratches an eye

just the mirror that painted her face    there is no one else in my privacy

most beautiful daybreak he ever saw    was a sky created by others

time to fold up the unfinished world    swim away into the night

the bones of my birth fetched a price    became the whisper in another's life

listening in another's arms knows all my heart is made of

deliver me from clothes and skin    from wind and the crow brought in

whose bones in the ocean of today have guided my hand beyond

walk in a small garden that maybe someone came to fear

does the voice of one who is dead gamble away the phantoms one knows

the eyes of the sheet you lowered over your body stop at dawn

more silence in life than life in the universe—sky, at other times

i am back in the house a child would know the instant sky goes to stone

when weeds make me their living path    into a canyon too inessential to follow

i refuse to inherit anything smaller than god's journey through our rooms

from the portrait of the man born a slave    i walk outside of healing

and what if the heart giving birth to the child prefers the hush and the heat of an attic

what lightning remembers will never wound    is the moon returned to its river

leaning over the edge of august    the horn of the wounding moon was true

who is ironweed staggers stars    this hand i dipped in its spring

too dark to tell the sun i have seen where the last garden on earth has run

one chord of light searingly close but you learn the guide that guides the hand

and if i could find my child as a child again in the memory of blue Japanese iris

if i knew the name you called yourself    would that rub sight into my eyes

captives are those who return and return—i am a potato surrounded by mountains

how do we gather whispers of blood as they fall from a buried shadow

from the trees there is a cry, saddled, waiting    is the sound of the dark in our house

why do elderberries continue to dream until each drop of blood returns

keeping things whole in the absence of wind :: here's a body gathering its shell

call of the owl beside a dream :: or a pine taking leave of the night

years pass in a single white blossom    i think no one looks in or out

how is it i know the escape of small winds has answered the prayers in my breath

in the early life of the mother of the rose    you are the one afraid of flowers

learn to breathe water you will find the other forest

the other secret in the touch of a hand    life in the absence of light

grasses are a small risk to ever speak only by prayer

lay down in the fire on the side of the defeated    wind that will never come

in the archive of the last word    of the weight of the rope    how ugly is flowering

only sky blowing into the eye of echinacea    ashes of black umbrellas

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

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

in the voice of the dew as it bleeds a rose    if i forget the origin of love

i remember the motionless hanging    as if to die    in the sky of another's pain

who wiped the ears of the dust away and sang without voice the creation of song

what happened to the yearning that called my name    from a light in a window of the cross

i shall seal up my windows to bring in the sea    sings the embryo of all we are not

comes a lover who wears the body of the moon    and my life is barely begun

how else shall the heart commune with faith    but in the disquiet of yesterday's light

on the table of stone rests a motionless song    now my forests refuse all light

the birth that was once and named forever    the pulse that preceded my heart

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

the pleasure of singing into the ears of giant trees    is how i have come to change

when you wake in the night there is nothing to fear    come down to the place where you lie

low voices of trees dragging my soul by its sleeve    the lightning still in its seed

why should someone dream of me    set heart in a place beyond what is seen

the night and the day are her arms her name    and the river we are given to hold

within an earlier melody    unknown outside the dream    are the lands i am and will learn to perceive

the valley that opens where nobody is looking    the light that hurts to understand

many winters one old robe    everyone i love but do not know opening in the wind

our home as it should be    without further blessing    than the fall of all that becomes

from these rows of ashes still warm you will grow    your silence is no one else

why i can't put my mouth into words    takes a lifetime of candling for life

the orioles are here but where have we hidden the song of the trees

the heart in the stone beat again while i slept at the end of never getting home

who owns the silence    and who else would know    the love that hides our beginning

thus i was given me    vein upon vein    around eyes that were already there

the sound of the severed string is this :: which vow to your death have you failed

i heard a life fall    or i heard nothing at all    the arms of the cross at my feet

will i see through the window that has fallen asleep    my casket carrying its rain

with the taste of stars in my mouth    whose wisdom am i ready to learn

that part of the sky that fell into my mind    is to whisper the name of the raven

what can you write on the skin of the past that only the sleepers will read

the gate of the moon left open    is to love what i cannot know

there comes a day when it will not open when i ask the sun its troubles

there was a black branch touching the silence where neither could remember waking

from hands you will never see spilling music for the first time because you are just arrived

streets walking with their heads held low ::  i climb the stairs of the rain

i love this song that was not heard until the moon was warm from its birth

this is the art of birth :: that the cold and the dead shall blossom

it is always there    gathered in scars    takes nothing away

the prayers you have answered are always somewhere else    yet so close as to be inside

it is the mouth of the moon i feel against my side :: where the wound of my death is not yet real

you were always no further than the moon can sail    no more than my eyes could gather

what you say is nothing we say about you    and the arrival of our silence is too late

what is there in me    no heavier than lightning    yet helpless in the gravity of light

for the sake of all burials and the flames of spring :: shall i marry the grief of the soil

all night long knowing and not knowing the figure asleep on the shore

there is a wild place we can build in the rain :: and give to each other the calm of night

as if someone in our shape enters the sun before us    there is a hole there in the light

what does the sleep of the rain have to do    with music the kingfisher heard

you keep calling and calling to the beginning of listening :: dawn

the downhill slope of endless light :: or the moon who cannot stop listening

whose question is the music you alone can dream

before there is knowledge    we know    how the hands and the trees will be broken

how far is the reach of a flash of darkness from this nest of borrowed rain

my dust and i will surely forget the smell of approaching rain

into the round hole in quiet moss

into the hand    opened    waiting

the blue flowers of her cloak

stirred by rain

and the rain climbing down

the knees of the soil as

slow as your life in a dream

we cannot separate

the secret from the offering

awake and breathing

            watching words

drizzle against panes i

            can’t be reached through

quiet centuries of rain

            standing under

my thirst

            the heart no one

notices

            in a white sky

wings

            suddenly open

whose face i have never seen
who brought me the gift i
         only desire
                  in her presence
who also held and kissed
         her child's cold body
                   and still had to live
whose breath could not
          bring life back
to whom the moon and the dark
         entrance belong
         the walk of sunlight through
         a windless forest and
         the longing to love
she who knows
         my heart will wear out

who is

the thunder and

lightning

who is the storm cloud

and wind

the tumultuous music of rain

is what happens

intense song-bursts of light

tectonic

collisions of sky

            rolling bonding

above the earth    with the earth

            where you are

the work of the sun

            is wine on my skin

and summer heat in my veins

            the work of the sun

is with the roots of the river

            and cannot be lifted into light

the work of the sun

left our father an orphan

trespassing within his own blood

the work of the sun

is what the house finch is saying

and what i am saying

to ourselves and to all others

the word you came from

will rise again

when it fades

            the sky appears an empty bowl

when our lips are long closed

            memory must breathe through our skin

each day my face reappears in this river

            for the sake of the traveler who doesn’t return

what have i done with my longing

why have i brought her to stale Ohio

to the selfish soybeans

into the company of sycamores

            who are as they should be

                        in the polluted nights

and who think of going nowhere else

when i am without

body

and the prison of sunrise

collapses

is that the moment

                                    you say

the lie

arrives

to begin again

            in the labyrinth of the womb

of astonished silence

like a white chrysanthemum

            in deep shadows

in new flesh

before the earth has weight

before the dust of the savior

            comes down from the wind

before the road takes leave of the shore

the moon

            lost her way

along the river

and i lost

my way across

            the sky

and the gentle

            light opening

in the arbor

            of sleeping faces

is not meant

            for eyes

now the rain stops

in mid-afternoon

now the moon can’t

be seen but

i know she is singing

in the small burrow

she makes

in the bank of the river

now i walk through

the window

and across

the wet sky

to where dream faces

are drifting    

without sound

above the dark river

and through

the sycamore trees

detached from the poem

            there is always a voice drinking and dying

            there is always a noisy fountain dying of thirst

but in here where there is no sound   

i hear the voice

of the friend who loved you

fields of light and darkness

no one else is going to touch—

this Ohio grows old within me       

a woman releases the raven’s feather

she has always owned

my body no longer dreams it is a river

            and what cannot be understand is hushed

and earnest

gathering its breath

i don’t understand

the within

of what i’m seeing

that rises up

uneasily

in sinuous

white limbs

across the kindness

of the river

it breathes

from my heart

we share

space in the dream

mother sycamore

            of the long sculpted shadows

            of the ruined wind

your nave

whispers

who taught me to love another language

            to follow what i do not know

thus the house i lived in has abandoned me

            and the water no longer asks my name

the god of death chants with children

            of the longing that is lost in my face

i have the eyes to hear her searching for me

            in a life before this    in the mirror of the earth

because i died i am living

now the soil of extinguished souls begins to sing

and those who bestow blessings will throw open    my rose

( your window remains dark because nobody knows you

            before an audience of words lying in frozen silence

            dance eyes who cannot hear a call from the dark )

before going ahead i am already gone

            this is the blessing i wished for

            for the harvest of mystery will come on a day no one can forsee or explain

the road back to dark    or dawn

is everything—and innermost

and these are the last few undisputed miles:

a slow moon plows the sky above

            cornstalks shiver in the grid of night

and a small boy falls from his private tree

            as the face that made his world

looks away

the moon we separated from

            massive, tired      lost on the beach

where i wanted to walk alone

i walked from my dream

            through tall brilliant grasses

i walked from my dream

            into the place where we lie

the whole universe is here    disappears

            and

when the waters come again

we are no longer separate centers

            we are as naked as the mystery of night

as one small body

            at the edge of fear

in a hollow of the moon

it is delicious to be long away

from the face closed in a rose

it is delicious to reject the mansions

entrusted to never forget

it is delicious to wear the pure robe

in which god knelt down

to embrace a childhood     open to death

we need these desires     

the full moon

feeds on

the warmth in my blood is a lifetime of knives

quarrels with the moon, magnificent

the warmth in my blood is a delight

though i have doubts    i weigh and decide about other’s lives

no idea of existence puts color in my cheeks

this blood has some light from the birth of the sky:

those in the towers    left behind

the ocean parted from its farthest shore

beneath a pearl of light that failed to march with time

the day comes when the shadows throw down their dancers

            and a bell rising to the wind spins out of one’s life

how long is a lifetime in the labyrinth raised by death

            how long is a dream to the sleepers who lose their way

around the spark of night gather those who know existence

            where next in the web will i become

the sun of this day bleeds to death

            for the lives no man thinks of

snow fall across the mountains of the moon

            as moist and steamy as the newly dead

and there begins a silence

            that reaches so deep   it answers itself

i would rise to you    crows and black vultures

and lie on the shores of your air, if i could

i want tides to wade through me until i am the frail and unfinished poet

i want to write down the flaws of the sycamore

who is it i hear crying in the silence of strange bodies

who is it i hear weeping in the places you have been

there is a shadow across the vision i was close to once

when the horizon between worlds had been crossed

a poem that holds its breath    is how one grows

the tiny ground one stands on

that could be a grave

wakefulness returns    with the inrush of air into kingdoms starved of light

wakefulness returns    with rain-filled apples reaching for the hands of god

wakefulness returns    when the face you could not grasp rises from its seed

wakefulness restored

i died as a child

in a light that was missing

in a light held by tunnels

toward a birth left behind

toward the cold and the silence

stretched out and waiting

am i rising or falling

i lived as a child

by a dark hole in the wind

the wind of huge trees

in the roots of the corn

toward the silence and the cold

stretched out and waiting

i am falling and rising

i still feel the weight of the hand

lifting stones from the waves

setting waves on the scale

when we were children in the world

and the darkness seething

round each candle-lit face

was heavy with hope

            i

i hear wings

uncertain if they know delight—

black sounds calling across the lake of the eye

            ii

in the meadow of the eye

i tremble without moving

in dreams that feel like snow

            iii

and while the true eye

that asks for nothing

keeps watch beneath the moss

i cool the ashes of my wounds

in dew

from the source

uprising

birth is the hunger

one eats alone

—and a poor red cardinal

as broken as the sea

            without a song

            maybe wingless

is the only seed given

to the child

heron    blue

from the cave of the moon

guide

to the dimensions of winter stillness

naked path of grace

that leaves one lost in the sky

a way of life that is too narrow

fits me

the way white thirst matches

                                                holes in the sky

the way death

            and the not yet real

mingle equally within the living body

the light sinks down in mud
            now darkness can open new doors
now the secret horizons i saw as a child shall return

i am the shipwreck under sail
           searching for her darkness
or the pearl you discover when drowning
            caught in a dream outside himself

there was no one near to help
                                               he believed
           the dark under the oak was an orphan
                                               was a broken seed
there could be no rising from

a precarious life climbs up inside you
           a black butterfly    in the heart's incense
                        dark and delicate tendrils of wine

simple fall and crystalline
intricate machines of vanished moments
the outside of silence ::
                                                        snow

a small light can attract the darkness
mouth of sighs    breath of hearts

through a dark hole in the wind
                                   falls the dust that becomes song—
             sighs that have known being human

the naked eye is a question for the moon—
           extinguished    alone    dressed in white bone

the tiny bones of what i have not been
           are like sycamores without fear
or a girl who is happier than the moon

the rose within the rose    is what i hold in the deep of my hand

then i woke with the sun on the backs of wild geese
            as the branches of day were spreading

what is the sound of an island of night    in a sea it cannot name

coming home at twilight falls away    and i am aware of the wings that hold us down

in the perfect darkness of what is to become    is there a name for the mother of dawn

will the landscape of the last dawn arrive gently    in the mirror of a voyage without end

my black years fall around me, blood of the night    a body without sky without stars

with my ear on the ground i am singing to this     what dies in a man when he lives

for all of those who are hidden from you    draw near to the dark and listen

you went looking for your voice at sunrise    
          silence growing brighter and
the pleasure of death to go through

before there is nature    when the world is half spoken    in whom shall the secret lie

an emanation from the lost and the mists    and the nothing i am doing comes to unrest

there is an ancient animal breath in the night    that is night that is refuge    that is mine

strange fires seek their deep    as the milk that surrenders her breast

the sea scent of heaven and of who will awaken there    when at last i disappear

in a world of other seas    will an older darkness still lift the waves

the faces i have never seen before, and the faces we wear    not to lose each other

who would alter the root of light    but the stars must first die out

...or to lose your way in the darkness    swelling with tomorrow's death    ?

in the dark life i've just finished    a single light is left on