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you scan the surface and not a crevice
springs light forth and no dark trench

invites you in, so where is the exploratory root to
fix, where do the stakes that angle up the

spread stand off: if you can’t get going you
might as well get gone, goodbuddy:

the snake dangled from the

woods of his loins and, tempted,

she offered herself,

and the snake rose to the sweet

fruit of that occasion,

after which millstones of

labor and kids-to-raise swung

from their necks, and they

awoke way outside of paradise.…

there are those who think it okay to be the
way they are: this conclusion has never

reached my case, nor has it ever it: not even this
plan, this possibility: I bring you one—

who?—dragging himself behind: up front
moral conflict, chicanery, sleaze, and

shtick ruffle the terrain, while there, in
the rear, oh-oh the unprotected, uniform self,

clear, dumb, whispers a single
word: counter that with all this talk: how

tiny the seed can be whose pulp is the world:
(I should never criticize anyone because—

so there be no loss—I glue the fault to
myself): there is, there are, there be: there

is the chance that: it is this that: wuz wuz
if I am never to ease into the fame

groove, I must at least secure the virtues of oddity:
should a pip squeak: or should

one wrap the whole world round in a film of
disbelief and swallow it: the crow convention

in the tall trees downslope yesterday (big-berry
boluses) was somewhat unsettled, shifty, and

quarrelsome: sudden callers would pitch into
breezes and round back to a new perch: two

would slice downward in an aggressive pairing
disagreeable wing-flickerers would lift and

relight—250 of them altogether and once or
twice they all lifted off at once

downwind like a loose cloud: and then by
twilight, unnoticed, they’d left the trees

picked clean: what sort of meeting was it:
was the whole genetic neighborhood assembled

to see and be seen: were the early stages of
mate selection under way: will they pair off &

square off, now: it’s 10 March: the redbird
has been whistling and chipping since mid-

February: small, bud-feeding birds have
cheeped and sat still, fluffing themselves as

in an adorning mirror: how do the birds know
what to do, what it’s for, where to build, how

to care: how does the butterfly, bulged out
of the chrysalis, know what to do, having

been nothing but a worm: it is a mystery:
but no more a mystery than that I have a

planet to sit on while I type this: that
there is a mystery there, son: shore is: if

you take anything seriously, you’re a fool,
and a fool if you don’t: wherein,

then, is one to be wise: ’tis wise to be
foolish and foolish to be wise: leant over,

scrambling, searching for the last years, one
goes into a pixie dance at the lunatic poetry,

the wooden structure wrapped in butcher paper
meant to save one from death but, alas, it

was but a painted show that careens and crashes:
hark, here goes the squeaky thing again.…