Sing a song of sang, that human root:
wrinkled homunculus growing slow as thought.
Even the seeds take twenty months to sprout,
stones that finish growing in the ground
as if traveling through the interminable gut
of some great beast that vanished in the Pleistocene.
Sing a song of burying in haste,
the berries’ flesh a tempting prize for mold.
So if picked on a morning in early September,
nestled into a plastic vial & sent by overnight mail,
you must plant them as soon as they arrive —
don’t put it off till after supper.
Choose each resting-place with care,
moving slowly through the woods & stopping often.
Pretend you’re burying a grandparent, piece by piece.
Make a hole with your index finger
Night stops them cold
where they cling
to the green thorax
of the mother of bumblebees,
that bed of nails.
They hang
lifeless but not dead,
sleepless but very far from waking
to the vast meadows that blaze
above their heads.
my find was nothing but a stone
nothing but forgetfulness
and so to church to own
a little sin
off the street
to set straight my mind
hands design a hand
our every now an ever hour
stone fathers
live on as eggs
we must be content
to sit on change
till it fables
varnishing paper for books
evening burrows
into the sand
I have less heaven
than my eyes
in one of my eyes the greatest wonders
and in the other sleep
so with sure glasses
light might be art
being a stranger
where most are strangers
body in a boat
Sunrise, & the wren’s song bubbles
up from his feet. He dances on the wall
as the ridge turns crimson. Watching from
the window, I feel the heaviness in my chest
lifting like a field stone flipped by the plow,
turning its unmarked cheek toward the harrow.
This world was never a text. With the spring
plowing, arrowheads swim to the surface
of the field adjoining the large sinkhole
down in the valley where an underground stream
briefly exposes itself to view. You can follow it
back under the bedrock in growing darkness,
hunching farther & farther over until you’re down
on all fours & the water meets the ceiling
with a final gurgle. I think of this whenever
the sky in a poem shivers under the knife
business done you turn
into the garden
green and dark
asking questions of travel
answered in words of night
like a lover or a church
a nest of papers
convenient as one’s own pale horse
not yet dead
but open to it
an ink body to carry me
away by night
a hall full of people
ready to live at night
mortality is a great blessing to us
I drink bourbon all summer
my life still as winter light