What is the willow writing on the water,
one branch bending in the wind, one tip
breaking the flat white surface? Does it matter?
Yellow-leafed pond willow, rain’s own daughter,
long roots stretch and search and sip.
What is the willow writing on the water?
Shattering the mirror the sleek brown otter
slides from the slick brown bank, and slips,
breaks the flat white surface. Does it matter?
Comprehension, wisdom, nothing will come after
the fleeting words are written. Who can keep
what the willow is writing on the water?
Every shatter, every ripple, will break and scatter
every message from the long yellow branch’s drip
breaking the flat white surface. Does it matter?
This is where I need the earphones
that magnify sound: that couple
on the sofa, somewhat entangled,
occasionally laughing, is talking a little
too quietly for me to overhear.
The help are talking, too,
as they clear the noon-rush clutter.
I catch one lover saying three quarters,
a customer at the counter the wrong time.
like the sixties
North America
they all crashed into the rocks
day old bagels
so it’s just you
Always I want to know
the business of strangers,
I find the clean air –this is
the starting point..
Here are the types of sound
floating insects make.
I have one in my mouth.
Take it.
Or a chipmunk, rustic warmth of a hole
filled with nuts and seeds,
the smell of wet leaves and the world.
Or a wasp chewing the old railing,
carrying the pulp home and spitting it out,
building the layers
of my smothering and exquisite nest.
Or a wolf, in a whisper,
I have heard every turn of the deer.
I return to myself and wake up
Cardinal’s red flame
unnecessary beauty
the purpose of God
Red flags mark the oaks:
cardinals, clear red feathers
trim the shining snow.
What strange stirring
in the heart of chickadee
caused him to cry Spring?
As for the beginning,
you will be forever blind.
The first light will never reach you,
the speed too great,
and you too far away.
You will sooner comprehend
the minds of stones,
the music in the hearts of suns.
Do you even remember, do you
understand your dreams?
There was a white-robed,
hooded figure in your garden,
a dead rabbit who came to life
and hid beneath your bed,
a silver cup that held the deep-red
souls of all your friends.
Front step broken,
front door deeply cracked,
generations of paint.
Scratches around the keyhole,
fingerprints around the knob.
On the hall table a notebook
kept by the children:
lists of the birds that came,
drawings of themselves
playing in the snow.
A little too much furniture:
rickety tables, soft chairs,
iron plant stands that once held potted ferns.
A battered dresser with crockery not chipped enough to toss,
a few old letters, knick-knackery, a blotted book.
Behind the tattered draperies, on the walls,
Too many weeds and the overgrowth of thyme,
sprawl of echinacea, hollyhock and balm
sprouting all over and tipping, and rosebushes
with their swollen hips and beetle-hole trim.
Soft tomatoes drop from blighted stems,
slug-gnawed peppers rot.
Tough-skinned zucchini lizards
stalk among mildewed leaves.
Are these bloated yellow giants
the cukes I planted here among the beans?
Pumpkin vines crawl across remains
of flowering radish and lettuce gone to seed.
On paper it was perfect, neat:
the gourds all there, just so,
not a bug or weed,
carrots in their tidy rows.
—a three-year old describing her grandmother.
Do you know here have those old feet have been?
Places a granddaughter never could guess–
or even a daughter, who still is too young.
They’ve danced alone on cool spring grass,
printed sand left wet by the ebbing tide.
In stylish shoes, those feet have tripped
down a city street on some dark errand.
In heavy boots once, they climbed
a hill with a lover to watch the moon rise.
They have walked steady and soft
in a silent room so long that the wooden floor
still holds the memory of their restless tread.
And think of what those old feet
have pressed into earth:
the leaves of long summers,
They cross the lake,
carve ripples toward the sunset–
the miracle of stone on water.
Along the violet path
gulls cry home,
clasps on the silver chain.
So many questions.
Choose the smoothest stones.
To transcend the limits
of the Spirit, you must trust
that the answers are complex. You must
learn to float stones.
Once, on a morning yellow and cold,
I walked by a brook through an overgrown wood
where heifers grazed. Wary they followed.
I walked with care around their curiosity.
I stopped by the brook on a flat gray stone.
The heifers startled, blundered away.
Had I been careless of their tenderness?
The beech trees trembled their amber leaves.
The heifers startled, blundered away;
I wondered if I’d done some harm.
Beeches stood with amber leaves trembling,
pine branches, hemlocks flickered in the sun.
I’d not meant them harm. I was turning to go
when one Jersey fawn returned alone
through pines and hemlocks flickering the sun–
her cloved feet pattered softly on the stone.
There will come a space
when Evelyn will turn.
She’ll touch a yellow bird,
or watch a squirrel crack a seed.
Or maybe the sight of a single blossom,
or the thought on one clear night
that even the stars will die.
She’ll put the ring on her finger
and we’ll come.
And she’ll keep her house
and tend her garden
and everything will change,
the way it’s always been.
One black calf came, curious, to the fence,
the rest grazed slowly through the field.
People drove by.
Nobody stopped.
The clouds
in the west parted just in time.
We fitted binoculars with heavy filters
and there she was.
Our size.
Turning with us
around that close yellow star.
Dark against that star.
For months she’d been yellow
against the darkening sky.
We won’t live
to see this again. And will anyone