I know more wrote than read that book which is the self I am

When I had my vision

like the dark structures

of communication

turning somewhat lucid

I thought these

borrowed breaths

could picnic

for a century

and that distance

could allow the windmills

to stall and dry

into an afternoon's landscape.

And my dear child

will you ever know

how I saw the great

ohio ember

the rain move

like a hand with its palms

raised

the admission of the strange

the fuzz

that one sees

looking across the impermanent shore.

This is the mystery

that I am doing to myself.

And sometimes we hear

the tree run, the water erode

the stone grow

Leaving Home

Some of
us,

remember leaving

home in the morning,

exploring

the bayous,
fishing with bread,

catching hermit crabs

catching a fly

to put into

venus-flytraps

growing wild

in the meadow

eating sour weed.

How careless one must become

To know the pleasant promise

And solitary expedition

Of a tiny boy thinking.

:ove :oem

I'm late

I understand that

And I'm not interested

in the unusual ways

bugs mate

I don't think

that necessarily

makes good

poetry

But I do think

if I could touch

your hand right

now that would be

good enough

You see

I am very far away

from you

I don't

fully understand

that you could hear me

I am as a

lonely house

without windows

without floors

still

I am missing

I don't know why

our birth dates

are on everything

I touch

I think you

were trying to be

funny by giving me

a hard time

I got that later

I do love

you much

more

Targets Hit by Accident

And are we not just fragments

Sappho on the street corner

with a girl from Las Vegas

an empty room freshly painted

a mirror in the reflection of a lake

the dream of history reversing

out onto a funereal landscape

the water drop constellations

but I am not going to imagine you anymore

than I have to. One goes back to old sources

the ebb and flow of different species

of trees, the green moons of sleep

the endless fragrance of darkness

Are we not risking the next chapter

the abandoned lap, the fine result

that had easily come to us

O my dear nothing

your voice turned out to be

the same phantom

a tidal pool of words within earshot

It doesn't matter we've forgotten

the submerging months among

the fleeting absorptions

the loose daylight texture

the happy secrecy

the lucid cheerful insight

showing how much you know

etched into a cloud bank

against the ordinary eternity

The explanation will be better than the poem itself

The difficulty has been extended

out from what it needs to be.

And there has been no special

isolation. There has been no

quite walks out in the autumn.

No trying to get at it

as if with the absence of life

brings one closer to it, and then

to what has gone on further

down the road because of a sound

you thought you were being beckoned by.

But we find we are only trying

to keep as a surprise for ourselves,

the buzzing uneaten colors

of fall, the water necklace, and fish streams

a couple of page turning episodes

that is probably a good lesson

for artists of all kind. A peripheral

text draining out of an accordion

like glint off the bay. The possibility

of illuminating the witness

as though everything in her has been left out.