an eye that takes
two weeks to open
how to sleep through that
unwavering gaze
round as an infant
indifferent as a cane toad
to some appearance
of planetary conjunction
much less any hypothetical
end of life on earth
where the other eye
now dreams storms
the feet seek freedom
busting the broadest toe box
splaying out for balance
in an almost gape
at the gravity of it all
and the earth’s endlessness
such a repertoire
of grounds and surfaces
for the feet to savor without ingesting
to rely upon without clinging
a lesson from the dust
of the ancestors
who would’ve gone to rest
in their best shoes
the straight and narrow ones
that pinched all through church
morning smells like a burning hymnal
now that it’s afternoon
like a vast excavation
by archaeologists of the present
a blend of fresh earth and mildew
ozone and the blood of cut roots
if i were a dancer i would
know what to do
with this wild scent turning
into end-of-summer heat
as it is there are sun-drunk leaves
insects and vagrant warblers
and they seem to have
things under control
while i sit and try to be
a better place holder
hot summer night
itching even where
nothing itches
wind from the west the sound of metal striking metal
I found a knife in the woods. Or more accurately, I found an old, tooled leather sheath for a knife with the remains of a hilt sticking out of it.
rubbing my belly I grow
old and ugly
all winter I am broke
and in summer like a child
I dig for gold
the earth going to pieces
in my pocket
Rain has forsaken us. However much water I give my gardens, it still isn’t enough. Tomato and squash vines wilt. Corn leaves curl. The potatoes gave up altogether, leaving me a half-sized harvest. I feel like the opposite of King Midas: Everything I touch turns to dust. But let me have one wish. I’ll keep it secret even from myself, and carry it back to earth’s ear in a bucket.
sinkholy
fields resting on straw-
thin stalactites
building site
the four-square mounds
of unearthed earth
It is still light where I sit
reading the lines you are touch-
typing in the dark.
The planet’s curves
are always coming between us
her ceaseless spinning
her magnetic field
her core of molten rock.
But it’s the state that says stop
behind arbitrary lines
the border force that says stand still
for security screening
and if you’re poor, stay out.
The earth is always knitting
us together. Her forces
are centripetal and convergent.
The seven deadly elements fight
like nestlings for our worms.
Death is without end
and therefore never as shapely
as my morning eggs.
Don’t misconstrue the ouroboros:
it’s not consuming but giving birth,
having just crawled out of
its own mouth.
I wake every day of the week thinking
it’s enough to follow
the warm curves of the earth
wherever they lead, though I know
it’s nowhere good.
And each day I dress
as if to the funeral of a blackbird
The sun comes out
in the middle of a shower,
too high for a rainbow—
unless you imagine
the bird’s-eye view:
rainbow against the ground
and off to the side,
the radiant field lines
of this magnet, Earth…
Earth tones—a term
no recent migrant from the tropics
would understand,
how a dormant earth
can come in moss-green, bark-gray
and a thousand browns—
umber, ochre, sienna—
and spring still a hollow gurgling
somewhere below.
The bare ground seems
at first an oversight, then
a growing scandal—
all that anonymity stripped away,
the brown earth caught
without its papers,
and the pines like secret agents
sifting every seditious
whisper of the wind.