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