| Contents Blackberry Pie
Step by Step
Tender Drops
Easy Pieces
Needed Lights
Some Instructions
Things to Do with Words
George at Heaven's Gate
Forever Girl
Three Ways of Not Knowing
Pyrrho and the Green Man, Fishing
Shocking Nonsense
Tender Rule
Joseph Discovers Gender
The Poet and the Angel
My Culture
Across from Victoria's
Old Man Jeremand
Against the Mathematicians
Butterfly Bush
Various Sensations
BLACKBERRY PIE
She lets her hand delay
in the cool flour, light brown
and smooth like the image
of her other self roaming.
The red-winged blackbirds
are flocking, down in the
orchard, the cold is cool,
the green is up and sunlight.
She too can fly and when she
does red and black and yellow.
It was a storm last night
pricking through the brambles.
She would make a blackberry pie
from canned blackberries.
Last summer, she canned twenty
pints on the day the letter came.
She waited two months to respond
each word a thorn and a sweet berry.
She had mashed fresh berries
and drunk them with sugar.
No more letters the whole winter,
but blackberries, blackberries.
She opens a jar, the juice stains
her hands, her mouth, her tongue.
STEP BY STEP
The day breaks open like eggs
in cartons, shaken good,
better than imagined, the
sunrise sizzles, and it
smells like bacon
in a vegan's house.
Coffee would be better.
It is a day for the old
moon walkers to assemble,
to lobby for a mission to Mars.
God, we need it. Don't we?
Up the hill, down the hill,
my Joan goes.
We drove out to the park in
winter, the corn stubbles
below snow on flat fields,
to steam up windows,
six hours from the Great Lakes.
The silly things we do,
oh, the silly things we do.
(The portly prince dances
around the tommy tanker.)
We need some serious attention,
some dedicated time, some well
thought out plans,
some charts to show the
hill gods.
TENDER DROPS
She pressed the tender ribs and
bruises of years of waiting.
She waited, but kept herself busy,
spinning out shards of waiting,
making of waiting a universal figment
until at last the end of waiting
would be a sort of death,
sauntering in friendly with terror.
We would call it mental illness,
squeezing out the tender drops of
pain, but we are wrong, the psycho
babble is wrong, the PhDs are wrong.
EASY PIECES
He walked out into the cold morning
inexplicably happy, light, dancing.
But why not? Does happiness have
to be so rare? But not this easy
happiness. How can he justify it?
Hormones, it must just be hormones.
NEEDED LIGHTS
Priss out the stars, lost behind
comets or moving magnetic winds
like a fake metaphor that must
be saved from any trace of ripe
days. No, these are needed lights,
to fill her firmament, waters in
which rest swims in green, where
water spouts drop their load of fish.
The lobster eyes in shallows below
lamps off Key Largo and the shrimp
shine, already salted in their brine,
must hold them home and fill their
meanders with a hope, despite a ring
stone or sacred pledge of no combat.
Still she must eat them tonight, with
a delicate sauce of butter and lemon.
SOME INSTRUCTIONS
Do this:
Go down to the creek,
somewhere where you can reach the water.
Lay down on the bank.
Don't worry about sand in your hair
or getting your cloths wet.
Now reach your arm out
and rest it just on the surface
of the water,
just barely on the surface.
Feel the movement,
trigs and leaves lightly
brushing against your arm,
maybe minnows or those
long legged bugs that can
walk on the water.
Notice movements and sounds
and your slight effect.
It is an old metaphor.
THINGS TO DO WITH WORDS
I notice that somehow he wants to
use words to recover what is lost.
She, however, wants to define a
topology of hunger and longing.
That other one, he wants to build
another world from old fairy tales.
And she would like an irony of
word play for elite entertainment.
Now that insurance guy he would
set out a comforting obfuscation.
She actually wants to change things,
to subvert expectations, create myths.
This fellow over here just wants to
record moments before he forgets them.
GEORGE AT HEAVEN'S GATE
The mystery box opened just one more level
and there he stood at his life review.
He was a little cranky, having just died
and all, so as the episodes flitted by
he couldn't help wondering why he was being
subjected to this. His life was a reasonable
life, as it showed up. He hadn't done anything
very bad, or very good, for that matter.
He had been puzzled most of his life and most
of his enthusiasms proved to be a little off
some mark, but he couldn't quite see the mark.
He had died of a heart attack, 80% hereditary.
Those ancestors, God bless them, it wasn't
their fault either, so he watched it all
a little bemused and a little irritated.
The being of light sensing this was kind.
So it went on through and he regretted some
things, was happy about some, overall he was sad.
He wanted to ask who set up this whole scheme,
but the being of light didn't seem so inclined,
so he just let it slip and started in on yet another
realm of language, experience, and desire.
FOREVER GIRL
She beat her head against
the logic book, loving it,
sorting out the yarn ball
just one more thin strand.
She loved puzzles and patterns
and would trace them out
with fingers like tracing
bones on the face of a lover.
Clean and pure, economical,
and they are practical, look,
life is dense with them,
more than we can ever trace.
So she kept on, tracing and
sorting out strands, oblivious,
on out to the forever reaches
of tender calculation.
THREE WAYS OF NOT KNOWING
Here is a direct statement:
He thought in the forest light,
dappled and filtered through leaves,
that this text should be true,
but he didn't know. How could
he know? But he wanted it to be true.
Here is an illustration:
A voice that could be his own voice
agreed to answer some questions.
The voice assured him of certain
future events and of a pleasant future
in some pleasant otherworld.
Here is some indirection:
Raking leaves, sometimes twigs and
small branches get mixed in.
How will this affect the leaf shredders?
At night the village sends a truck
to suck up the dead leaves.
PYRRHO AND THE GREEN MAN, FISHING
They were down by the fishing creek.
He gave him a pained look. He said,
"Pyrrho, you evasive bastard. Everyone
else is clear. You just equivocate."
Pyrrho didn't like to be pinned down,
but this was a dear friend, someone to trust.
He said, "It's simple. I am just a skeptic.
I suspend judgement on what I don't know.
I can't get beyond infinite regress, diversity,
relativity, assumption, to some fixed certainty.
I enjoy speculation and fantasy, but I try
to remember that it is speculation and fantasy.
I live within the limits of language, experience,
and desire, as best as I can, without worry.
This is a lot of territory to move around in,
but I can't help wishing there were more."
His friend reeled in his line. Sighed. The clouds
were a deep contrast of late afternoon light.
It was a lot of theatrics, this big life drama,
for the obvious, the covert dogma of the age.
SHOCKING NONSENSE
He unbuckled the belt of Orion last
night, despite city lights, in the cool
air, impersonal boy with prickled skin.
Not since the Age of Anxiety has there
been such a confluence of sources filling
the simple vacancies, past sin, past care,
past light, past passing. No, no permanence
has forced its steel, busting open doors
and running through bramble walled mazes,
no flacid poke weed afternoon, no hopeful
soft probe to the mothered planets, no
pricked feel, no rumpus room discoveries.
TENDER RULE
She made two demands that afternoon.
He must surrender his force or die alone.
He must rise to the occasion or whither.
He muddled off into a strangely warm December
among the brown leaves and brown trunks
over soft earth up to the high boulder.
She had regrets. She hadn't meant to push
him that far, not all the way to quarry stones.
She was a tender ruler, mindful of nuances.
She found him at last below the brown canes of a
wild rose bush, smelling of leaf mold and smoke,
led him home, fed him tea and biscuits.
JOSEPH DISCOVERS GENDER
He could respect that
they didn't need men.
Because he didn't
need men either.
He could respect that
they were attracted to women.
Because he was also
attracted to women.
But then things broke down
because he was a man.
"We need a DNA donor.
Are you interested?
No touching, though."
Now Teresa loved men,
at least she had learned to.
He loved Teresa,
but his DNA was useless to her.
At times he was a woman.
At times she was a man.
He said, "This schema does
not hold all the instances."
He was sometimes both a man
and a woman, but his DNA was
useless then.
He said, "Social roles and
biological roles are not the same."
She said, "They never taught
us this in school."
THE POET AND THE ANGEL
The angel looked across the plane.
"These souls generate their own pain."
"But can't you somehow help them free?"
"They won't even look at me."
"But how did they ever get this way?"
"They broke the rules and now they pay."
"But who set all these rules in place?"
"It's in the nature of time and space."
"But they seem so arbitrary."
"Don't be so smug, so damn -- literary!"
MY CULTURE
I wonder sometimes if Western civilization
is really that evil, now wait, just listen.
To each their private irony, even decadence,
even relativism, even fundamentalism, now wait.
I see a buzz of repelling electrons
and human rights as the nucleus. Just listen.
They all want that much and may be willing to
grant that much, now wait, just listen.
Here, just here, force may be needed, now wait,
just listen. OK, speak. You have the right.
ACROSS FROM VICTORIA'S
He sits on a bench by the peace pole
looking across to Victoria's Parlor.
It is a blue day and cool and the maple
leaves are scattered. His coat is warm.
He thinks, "Some day an old man will
sit beside me and tell me what is."
For years he has sat here. No stranger
has ever sat down beside him and winked
and looked with him across to Victoria's.
If it happened just once ...
This old man with winking eyes must
tell him after the years have passed
something, an inkling, a nice phrase
that cuts through, some secret, something.
It is a blue day. The oak leaves mix in
wind devils of maple leaves. It is cool.
OLD MAN JEREMAND
Many were the days in that farm time
when the corn was tasseling
and some beans were in,
the early lettuce all gone,
that he would go out to the woodlot
and dig in the humus
and smell and squeeze.
He was a druid of sorts, I suppose.
I know he never went to church
except for weddings and funerals.
My grandfather visited him once
to witness and bring him home.
He was very gracious in his way,
offering some buttermilk and cornbread,
the best in the county, he said.
In the winter his cellar was full
of potatoes and Mason jars.
His tobacco was in.
Then he would get out some old textbooks
from a used bookstore he once
visited up in Louisville.
Outside an old truck was often heard,
rumbling off toward Albany.
AGAINST THE MATHEMATICIANS
The sea oats are delicate.
Don't pick them!
I want to see the girl
I loved when I was fifteen,
just once more.
She had a saucy mouth,
was totally sane.
We stood by the pool and
watched the skinny dippers,
but not us,
we were barely touching.
We went into an old garage
filled with books.
The old man would come and
explain things to us.
I would hold her hand
tenderly as he explained
how there were gaps
between the rational numbers
and that forms contain
forms contain forms.
I lost the chance to ask
him my big questions
because I
didn't know what to ask.
He disappeared when
I was sixteen.
The garage has cars
in it now, I believe.
BUTTERFLY BUSH
I watched him land just this side of sixty.
Stars appeared in the recovery room,
galaxies and stars and beings of light.
They can breath in the vacuum of space.
Maybe they don't need to breath.
I think of him often now and his last
breaths and that last butterfly he saw
by the butterfly bush. He was tired.
He couldn't explain. When we got back he
was gone, and then his breathing was gone.
VARIOUS SENSATIONS
She rode the moped out the
country trail, no old men
leaning out car windows,
just wind and sun and blue.
She loves wind and sun and
blue and thunderstorms and
winter brown and spring green.
It doesn't get old, it is so old.
She rode. The yellow was almost
dripping light, washing light.
Wave and wave down the country
trail until the old stone shed.
It was cool inside and dark.
She laid on a cot and just traced
her body with her fingers lightly,
cool, light striping through the
spaces between the boards in the
door, she fell asleep and snored.
I found her that way and waited
until dark and then it was just
the moon shining through the
boards, touching her body quietly.
When she woke in the morning
she found me snoring on the floor.
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