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

and yet who has noticed how the one left behind becomes the final light