we climbed down
to the birthplace of water
bloodroot
wild ginger
sang
roots stretched into crevasses
limestoned voices
inaudible over
the gasp & suck
a scum of flotsam in the gullet
we crouched in the sun
blood-colored flowers
whitewater curling back
& back we prayed
for a rain of calcium
another sky opened
At two in the morning,
the ship not the ship
and the ending no end,
on my lost bed
I dream of having clothes
of cold water.
I hear the wind speak:
nothing but epitaph,
brass angels crying.
The church, a poor man’s box
that binds any guest
to the dying light
like some great weight.
I go down to the water
with my echo:
to say is to know.
Let the meeting of yes
and never, bear and bottle,
stone and noon
be merry with wine
and wholly underwater,
laughing at a bass.
A great knocking in me
and I am down, I am wood.
Hopes have to be settled on shore,
but the water being almost
at low water, fear is sure.
I urge the surgeon on,
my heart heavy for not hearing my heart.
Infinity makes
my head full.
I have been king
of the sea where
we drank and drank
till water was
the wish of all.
My mind is still
in the drink.
Troubled with abundance of sea,
land going to water,
I rent a raft and eat tongue,
a fat joy in the chapel Chance.
I study how this day dissolved
without fire, sad in mind.
Thinking out of the box,
my mind left.
Little to do but school a school in being,
a man buried in being.
Brain or pot? Water or wine?
Other things make a kind bed.
Click, clack says my walking stick,
& the soft buzz of a rattlesnake
shivers from the rock.
You go for water & bring back a strange new lover:
that’s how it is in the tales the old wives
used to roll between their palms.
One long noodle of clay made a bowl, a mirror
you could drink from. Coiling or uncoiling,
something always gets loose.
water is a book
full of tautologies
weary to the ear
I wake in the night
on my waterbed
weary journal
For the old swan,
staying in bed is
the custom; best
to rest where the sun
crossed the water.
To the old swan,
we tower and boat
like blind
stairs of lead.
alone in the west
her father is now every day
meeting with the end
a tree in a corner
would sing of water