Please mediate this small space
with your guffaw.
Possibly render me (or death)
carte blanche
And weary night, before
eyes close,
A darkening pane/pain of
feathers.
Grieving never suited
but is, is
Related to herding sheep
where moorland,
Mountain, river valley
creeps and levels
To a torrent beloved
of lapwings.
Green my eyelids,
overwhelmed
With particular notes
of joy.
Borrow amended leverage
for our children.
Bury amazement deeper
in the heart
And gift me then
with memory.
Do you delete recordings
of misery now
Or measure them
for later ratings?
You could mark your own place
in the column
--beat, beat--
revoking agreements
In case of heresy.
But I advise caution in this
first play.
You'll know when the time
comes for acting--
For drama perhaps
or a fine hand,
A wizardry. When you
note a plagiarism,
Collections of harp playing
leveled by unicorns,
Rebel appropriately.
Meshed gimmick with
honor bound
Or a market for hair cut
for a cause
Behooved me without credit.
For you,
In your lapidary calm,
pursue granite,
Sedimentary--slate--or crystalline
rock for me.
Better to slide over greening
moss licks
A million times but not alone
--pay attention--
After you've bent their ear
with moaning.
Or before. And it's salutary
to grade the finite
In a journey this short.
The infinite,
Leave alone.
Forever made large small large,
a reckoning
Of bone and sky and mockery
silvers past luck
But hasn't gotten me yet.
Not yet, but
Layers of, and then rivulets
of, of particular
Notes of joy descending
bell-like.
Past moss, past swamp, past
salt licks past
Or pasts geared up to revelations,
or no,
You wouldn't recognize this
curled and re-curled
leaf, a silhouette
of caring
given me by tender fisted
aunts.
And have you found
your end, where
filament breezes lock twig
to twig, a
barrage of whispers
coming on
from greeting to greeting?
I'm shadowy. The
former outline
melts, gives way to
breathing, simple, grave.
Not arduous.
Probable outcomes
include
separate experiences
of absence,
plenty, and mitigating
circumstances--
who falls by the way,
dances in lanes,
and falls in ditches,
drunk
and singing.
Come over a
hill and be mine.
That was long ago.
Now in the
night when the wind
wraps and raps
my room, I can
bear to wait
by scribbling. No
love such as
thine resurrects or
lies dormant,
fur hearted, wintering.
Kept a-weigh by
sheer loads,
a palliative here
for me, while
enjoying my silence.
Incorporate
gladness bodes and
bodies well
amid cork, foam, and
other debris.
Sit, sip, and revelations
rear up
bobbing and weaving,
mopping
and mowing. All the
dead, tied to
me by ribbons, do a
fly by.
Accord recognition to
the place
where we land.
Amnesty?
I beg that you, silent
or screaming
(select a mode), give
up abandonment.
Heart gives leavening
and leverage.
Hares, too, finger the
hunter, who
barely gets by. Week
after week,
the better misery
is mine, or
wouldn't you know it,
lost by dallying.
A straight path,
narrow,
across a plain, bears
to the left and
picks up a crowd.
Screaming
again won't do
so learn,
dear heart, to be
in it.
Bearable detours fade
in and out
or turn to the rock
walls of home,
only to wake up
shimmering,
heat borne barraged
and wilted.
Leap up and out, dear
heart, sing
particular notes of
joy, mid-
night, late golden
afternoons,
and always, always.
II
End here. Or begin.
Laugh. Hang head. Grin.
Merry meet and merry part
and merry meet
again.
Tolerable situations
occur.
Even playing fields
cooperate.
Begin here. Or end.
Roll. Push up. Bend.
Merry meet and merry part
and merry meet
again.
III
It was Saturday. Or Friday. On a
day, birds sang morning in, since we've
forgot. They're tired. When did we
give up our job and turn over to sleep
some more? Birds are tired of it--
doing it alone.
Animals are tired of it, of our for-
getting. For-knowing, we for-get.
Every day. Animals brush against
bushes, sniff air, crouch in shadows,
gazing.
Trees have tired of waving their arms
alone. And dreaming for us. Wor-
shipping in that way. The many
winds too, and the rains of
different kinds.
When did we walk out the door and
forget to come back? Tea was
waiting and congenial company. Was
there a bright shadow we chased?
Did we get lost?
Tired of tending the seasons alone,
curl over curl, earth bends
back her lip and spits. She
rubs rock-boned
hands on hips, cracks
a smile that drifts and drips
or roils or banks and settles deep.
Fingered branches whip back
tired of unseen forming, of
our sleeping walking. Tired.
Water tired of finding her own
level, of rushing over stones
alone. Our turned away gaze.
Fish flicker alone in pools,
tired, tired we
all, of marking time alone.
Columbine, iris, poppy, eyebright,
harebell, teeth of the lion, daisy,
tired. And we also. Tired of
feeling screwed up, down, side
ways, pinched, empty, full of
dread, half dead. What went,
goes wrong?
RE
MAM
BURR
First light harness grief,
forged at the curled lip
side–or–we wake up
sudden young budding and
keep you company. Or not.
Waters curl, angry in loning,
winds crash all down into
her breast and beat back
laughing bitter over
hill brow.
Or, we wake up. Or not.
Dog shaking earth rearing
up, sliding down, open yawning
and swallowing us. Long sideways
slither to a new pit.
Or we wake up. A little late
perhaps, smaller a bit, shaken,
wet rattish, in a heap left
behind.
But we wake up. Better late than
never/to see/clear, back in the
garden, open eyes and SEE.
Brother sister
mother father
tree
forfend
forgive
forbear
for
we
be come a light
rising