shade sense
blind made what tense
pigmy cypress trill or hill
(knowledge did not wreck experience—)
weather warped & nations fell
over the edge of the miracle—
—What thus doth keep love safe, brittle rhymer
—Depends on what you mean by safe, little climber
(To know without fear the mind of another)
For the Lovers Abandoned in Sunlight
Some friends had broken up—;
i didn’t think they should,
but still… (The bees had also
flown away to the chrome woods—
maybe the workers went ahead, but how?
No one understood—) The lovers
lifted yeses then a no …
Why? (let’s not get into
a whole thing about it …) Their hours never
snagged despair; why could they
not have loved each other more?
One day the hive returned,
like a gold thought in the gray
context of an oversight …
the lovers would find others
all too soon with basic need less
passionate than the first; i went on
with my reading & the bees worked
right up to the finished dusk
as if their house
would stay near mine in a drought-
tested thicket remote in time—
During a Suite by Gaspar Cassadó
Transfixed by the bow
only simply above: sighs of wood
& horsehair breath of the cello,
your azure perceptions /// …
(does it perceive also?)
as if pierced by saudades!
This night far from your pain tangled
with frog song
(such distance to the next town)
& your suffering cannot be measured—
não a luar
in this universal background—
Beneath a Dying Coast Live Oak
—to have made the mistake
of not caring —for one day! —
you stood in the parking lot …
where, on the ground: globe
of the wasp gall (the pupae
cannot peek out
through tiny Garamond ellipsis dots
of the outer shell …)
when suddenly, above:
grrr rrrrr gimme gimme gimme
squirrels trying to mate
in the oak, the dire twain
of their warring tails …
(sex is so much trouble outdoors!)
—the fear the loved ones
would end up alone
since humans will not modify
desire, & nothing
comes together anymore—
democracy & time,
from da: to divide—
there was the love you could not
live without, & you
had lost it, though you stood
inside the life
that gave you life—
[& heard a humming, like the]
—& heard a humming, like the
start of time …
& when the wind agreed,
the knobs of song molecules fit into
the frog, a knowledge heard
the humming, without fear—
(puffball, spinning, among
the dimensions: —
wears itself out,
wears itself out, by evening …)
to know, what, in a day?
to have thought
the children safe, & the little woods—
that thought must be given back …
not safe, & lost — you could
text but they might not text back …
Not to be undone by this.
(even if?) even if.
(even if?) even if.
… to rest
with what must be given up: there was
a breaking at the start of time,
then love that
broke the breaking …
The Forests of Grief & Color
—Listening,
past the hazel bank…. the changed life
lies under, prior
to purr—; new species grow
cold spores, inside
casing strewn … Groups & nations
howl unseen … The mind
god-labors
pumping itself green. It’s
then your true eye
gathers its half
loves; pollen floats
upstream in doubt,
in the shadow of a drought;
(put the phone down,
you’re just about
out of opposites, oh,
dark evening— sink …)
In brief
woods, there’s lignan
at work, past profit,
such comfort to decay, wood
mind would, so small
to say: “apart, fled” —!
Hold in hope, not … out! not to go
out among them, yet …
(to have important work
among the dead—)
The Before Sleep Kind of Everything