Illusive whiteness covers the ground
on the happiest of them all.
Fantastic. Festive. Familiar.
Where there are joyful faces, lit with expectation, lit with innocence and hope.
Where there is wishful thinking and dreaming, perhaps, for the daylight to make all their needs into flesh and blood.
Flesh. And blood.
On the happiest of them all, the fog, the dim light, the cold silent darkness is subduing the image.
My image.
On the happiest of them all, my bones ache and my muscles are tearing.
I apologize.
For you to have remembered the features of my face.
For kind, soft words we've spoken so many times.
For being the representation of a lot less than you deserve.
I apologize.
I don't want to repeat
the same mistakes over again,
or the mistakes somebody else made just so
I can have the experience of them. See, fucked up again. Live and learn. And off the excessive fondness for one's own self knowledge, untested, but reigning supreme. That leads me more astray, every day. What we commonly know in the air, in our dreams, what chooses continually & continually to grow, the obvious under our noses, is this life. Yearning in blindness. The weed has a name, is quite proud of itself, builds a community with other weeds, birds hop through. The imported domestic is a labor of love, but a labor, such a labor. At home here, no single thought is my thought. It whispers
Pick up on grand torque-suitably an
abstract reference. Can-needs must-be
inclusive. Those latent charms, so hard to
get across. Easy-filling the day with
detachable items. Day begins in haze as
trucks begin to move. All around the edges
of the town. The monuments encased in fog.
A line of bicyclists streaming past the
deserted sports palace, the marsh slipping
back in over the faltering road. The contributions
of day-laborers towards colonial
bamboo tower. Each succeeding generation of
monumentality bears its own distinct relation
to air plane, street lights, noise in wind.
The generations crowd each other out, until
no sequence-nothing wiggles in the void.
Evenly
fog parts and
you are again lovely
as a fresh
hill lady is.
High mountains
we hear you
over our lake fireworks.
How welcome!
hazy morning
the great white heron stands
by its reflection
seaside motel
the only window
filled with fog
dense night fog
the clear space around
an old barn
morning fog
the ladder higher than
the house
Searching for a lost
crew-woman, we
forded three creeks
in deepening fog.
It was ourselves
we lost then.
The park is filled with night and fog,
The veils are drawn about the world,
The drowsy lights along the paths
Are dim and pearled.
Gold and gleaming the empty streets,
Gold and gleaming the misty lake,
The mirrored lights like sunken swords,
Glimmer and shake.
Oh, is it not enough to be
Here with this beauty over me?
My throat should ache with praise, and I
Should kneel in joy beneath the sky.
Oh, beauty are you not enough?
Why am I crying after love
With youth, a singing voice and eyes
To take earth's wonder with surprise?
A fog drifts in, the heavy laden
Cold white ghost of the sea--
One by one the hills go out,
The road and the pepper-tree.
I watch the fog float in at the window
With the whole world gone blind,
Everything, even my longing, drowses,
Even the thoughts in my mind.
I put my head on my hands before me,
There is nothing left to be done or said,
There is nothing to hope for, I am tired,
And heavy as the dead.
Listen, the damp leaves on the walks are blowing
With a ghost of sound;
Is it a fog or is it a rain dripping
From the low trees to the ground?
If I had gone before, I could have remembered
Lilacs and green after-noons of May;
I chose to wait, I chose to hear from autumn
Whatever she has to say.