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Animals are
pictures of our souls
or were at
one time of the moods
and woods of
our souls possibly
entering too
soon and made
dependent on
us made to suffer
for us
frightened presentations
of our
feelings guiltless and free
having come
with us and wanting
nothing more
than to be thought of
which they
could not do for themselves
and to be
taken care of
for which
they would give us
their countless
bodies in return
one by one
restore to us
the lost feelings
of the world
A chosen
selfishness
freely
entered on
made me
confess
where love
has gone
to the yards
of the moon
reflecting back
their cleaned linen
while the
sun shines from within
relinquishing
brightness
not to be
looked upon
but how restrain
the children
who want to
blow up the sun
in service
to the moon
because we
have forgotten
our life
before the earth
our life
after its death
Is it worth
it
like sticking
it
out in hard
times
like a bad
marriage
as if all
marriages don’t lose
their
moorings sometimes it’s
a matter of
concentration
on a theme
of not becoming
thoughtless
but heartful even
when lost alone
on deserted roads
remembering
all these thoughts
and feelings
will one day
be excavated
by future
geologists
of the mind
so try to
leave not just manure
but
something gem-like behind
At a certain
point
the sun goes
right
through my
hands
I try not to
move
while the
light mountain
enters my brain
while the
crystal hanging
in the
window hurls
hundreds of
tiny
rainbows
around the room
imagine
having a body
like that
the way
they blend
and merge
at a certain
moment
we all
become sun
then it all
dances away
it all comes
undone
Sunrise for
our
hibiscus
bloom
is noon for
us
she sleeps
late
for beauty’s
sake
and is the
oranger
for it so
awake
the yard
vibrates
for a single hour
narrow
hallway
happily on
fire
even in
November
even if I
told you
each flower
lasts only one day
I couldn’t
have been wronger
Sitting on
the edge of the stars tonight
listening to
the distant traffic’s hum
the music of
the spheres I guess
I feel
terrific thinking of you
I still wish
we could run away
to Mexico as
we once did
to the sea
where I realized
you did not
want me
as much as I
pretended
but this
time knowing that
relax and
just enjoy our friendship
I will not
patronize you
with good
reasons
the point is
I still walk
right past
the most
extraordinary
people
and only
later seize
the sense of
having glanced
at them
before in you
Somehow we
forgot
about the
rainbow
we'd gone
after
and settled
for the rain
which kept
leaving
and
returning slower
and then
faster
nervously
setting down
his keys on
the lawn
and
frantically searching
for them
later
listening we
forgot
who we were
he was in
the middle
of a storm-dream
someone
who was
waiting for us
had just
left town
Breathing in
the infant god
and
breathing out the risen
even the
Buddha was spoiled and coddled
and headed
for collision
but today
it’s just a Monday
like the day
after a death
or many
deaths in the distance
which is
appropriately gray
with
advancing quickly clods
of rain-thickened clouds
lightening-stricken
coffin clouds
of a
heartless Monday
so you have
a sense of what the sun
feels when
the darkness pulls
it under and
it wants to go
Among the
early broken
and who is
not easily
a helicopter
hung
above a ruin
of lights
where once a
childhood
could be
cheaply had
the streets
named after lost battles
too shy to
sell apples
because the
past wants to protect us
from the
future like one
absent
parent from another
we children
who huddle
in the
present tense
being torn
asunder but still
trying to
make it make sense
My children
are three trees
and one
long-haired beauty
some people
are just roses
as she is
one unlike her
tattered
brothers who won’t ever
leave home
the orange gatekeeper
the bruised
pomegranate protecting
the birdbath
with his ragged arms
and the purpled-panicled
bee-enraptured
chaste tree
did you
think our going would be
any easier
than our coming
we are
nearing a time
when a tree
will be as valuable
as a child
and no child
will ever be
expendable
Rapture be
respite
while innocent
experience
stands
chomping at the bit
where one
learns wit
don’t make
it
rapture come
to shake it
rapture be
capture
still don’t
make it
we still
have to wake
convinced the
dream
out-reals
the world
to become
what’s fake
against the
ground of truth
among its
several raptures
only its
thirst can slake
All we have
left are the colors
and the things
they’re mounted on
with their
accompanying noises
for those
who have ears to hear
we become
the things we see
so color was
introduced carefully
the
tragedies of light too bright
then the
comedies of darkest night
and finally
the long histories of vermilion
and
honey-yellow ending in
his seething
blacks and blues
which they
keep trying to turn
into
something decorative or insane
when all he
had left were the colors
for his
fiery spirit to contain
The wild oranges of November
are viridian green or is that
Hooker’s green or sap green
over lemon yellow that new
grass green one remembers
in fall that crocus green or
golden green of some sunsets
that sunlight green as known
among connoisseurs of color
while all the while the valor
of true orange waits within
readying its gamboge grin
its cadmium yellow gaze
with maybe a little brown
madder alizarin thrown in
I have given up
on intelligence
in our time
not as a friend
but as a lover
I have relinquished
security as untrustworthy
replaced it with wishing
during which I keep busy
practicing my indecisions
but if you always wait for others
like a watched pot of whatever
on the stove girl you never get
done
but then one never does
get done with love
not what I’d call done
Nearer the end
now I see how
I proved not to be
in many ways
the real thing
in my earlier days
and at this point
conclusively I can say
this will take many
runs up the mountain
before the peak is reached
from which we will only survey
you and you and you and me
the endless mountain ranges ahead
across the endless sea
The same two sparrows
I wonder if they have
a cabin up north also
what is the shelf life
of a sparrow for ten
years now their kids
return to feather
my hole in the wall
the same two thoughts
I wonder in how many heads
they have spent a few nights
of longing
to be carried up
to be breathed by the gods
The
character of reality
stands apart
from
the evidence
of experience
with a
separate relevance
in
appreciative silence
but will you
handle it
between
sleep and joy
to leap with
welcome
expectant as
if forewarned
counting on
the concept
of the heart
as text
capable of
reading in itself
fathomable
and
unfathomable
worlds
If I try to
follow
the will of
the sun
as it
crosses
the little
stage
of my patio
it’s like
the passing
of something
both terrifying
and intimate
if you think
of light as
thought
sent out
into the depths
and heights
of space
and yet
today at least
caressing my
face
All day I
was sick
of myself
all week
all month
all year
it was a
decade and
then decades
of despair
and still no
cure
or else the
cure was there
but when I’d
bend
to drink the
water
or reach to
grasp the pear
it would
disappear
or exceed my
touch
and I’d
again despair
pretend to
surrender
pretend you
weren’t there
Fall
restores a sense of definiteness
to things
that had become oblique
a feeling of
objectivity to all
grown
somehow weak
which a
hapless winter
might be
tempted now to tweak
to the
extreme of bitter weather
what cold
intelligence can achieve
when it
wears its icicles on its sleeve
while
summer’s knowledge shivers
to the bone:
it’s only love
if you get
nothing back
yet what’s
to get
if this one
thing you lack
nothing I
bet
These fallen
leaves are my dead friends
swept by the
wind across my patio
I pick them
up by hand one by one
along with a
blue feather and a few sticks
how could
there have been so many
and carry
them to the compost heap
where leaves
vary in a way friends do not
disappoint
me though I have them
in looking
back one sees our mountain
ranges of
ignorance and pain
sprinkled
with valleys of sunlit rain
eventually
you come to another ruin
that was our
first trip overseas
but friends
don’t last like temples
though one
had the heart of a pantheon
and another the
stature of a god
To prove
it’s not just
one thing
repeating itself
one thing
after another like spring
fall comes
with its distinctions
sorting
things out separating
one thing
from another
into neat
piles and packing
things away
stamped
return to
the invisible
from which
you came
having
merely pretended life
having
masqueraded as beauty
having
propped love up with things
and a narrow
room where we met
to become
one fall comes
to separate
it all out
and settle
the debt
