HIGHGATE ROAD (1977)
These poems are dedicated to my son, John, with all my love.
A centipede, the many legs,
will go straight away a way
and cut
back at an angle acute
5to the course as if
to avert calamity
but then,
suspecting
his move anticipated,
10loop round completely,
reversing his way,
disheveling accidents and
probabilities into
cool shambles ahead.
(1976)
A fish, fin
ichthy about the mouth, prim
or
dially
5neat, translucent hinges
extending toothless
rims,
fans
his gills
After a creek
drink
the goldfinch
lights in
5the bank willow
which
drops the brook
a yellow leaf.
1974
After brief heavy
rain at two o’clock,
he listened at
the wood’s edge
5and could tell by
the clusters and sheets of drops
that some drops, summarizing
the leaves they’d
fallen from,
10were larger than
others or had
fallen farther,
and when the wind waved
wide like a conductor,
15a rustle of events,
cool, keyless, spilled:
he listened,
his body sweetened level to
the variable nothingness.
1971 (1977)
After a long
muggy
hanging
day
5the raindrops
started so
sparse
the bumblebee flew
between
10them home.
1975
A grackle
flicks
down from
the cedar
5onto
the shiny
alley
to see
if the
10shower softened
the garbage
bags.
1)
a grackle lands on a honeysucklebush
limb which sways too deep
(arching like a crossbow)
and sidling up
5corrects the spill
2)
the hollyhock summer-weighty
leaned over nearly out
of its roots but leafless now
stands winter-stiff to the wind
3)
10the pheasants leave tracks, an
abundance, in the snow:
icicles grow for the ground
Belief is okay
but can do
very little for
you unless you
5would kill for
it in which
case it is
worth too much
to have or not
10worth having.
Coming to the windy
thicket I
said a brook
must be here and lay
5down to listen
to the rustle but
fell asleep:
when I woke
the wind
10was empty and
the brook had
turned into a poplar.
(1976)
I’d give bushels of blooms
to bank my hardy cover
into your cushion mums
1968
If I leaped
I would
plunge over the
pinetops into
5the deepest sea
1974
I like nonliterary,
uneducated people,
beach riffraff:
they are so aloof and
5unengageable: you
can rope them with
no interest of your own.
On the way to
the eternal sea,
I looked for coins
in the gutter:
5looked at the sea,
a deep summary;
returned along
the gutter
looking for coins.
I remember when freezing
rain bent the yearling
pine over and stuck its
crown to ground ice:
5but now it’s spring
and the pine stands
up straight, frisky in
the breeze, except for
memory, a little lean.
1975 (1975)
I think
I have
a tick
on my
5tock
I thought the
woods afire
or some
house behind the
5trees
but it was
the wind
sprung loose
by a random
10thunderstorm
smoking pollen fog
from the
evergreens
I tipped my head
to go under the
low boughs but
the sycamore mistook
5my meaning and
bowed back.
1974 (1974)
It’s nice
after dinner
to walk down to
the beach
5and find
the biggest
thing on earth
relatively calm.
1975 (1975)
It is one
thing
to know one
thing
5and another
thing
to know another
thing.
1975 (1975)
I wake up from
a nap
and sense a
well in myself:
5I have
dropped into
the well:
the ripples
have just
10vanished
(1974)
I walked at night and
became alarmed
at the high lights and amplitude
but passed a brook
5the sound of whose
breaking water
took my whole attention.
1974
limber body
stiff dick
stiff body
limber dick
1968
Logos is an engine
myth fuels,
civilization
a pattern,
5scalelike crust
on a hill
but the hill’s swell
derives from
gravity’s
10deep fluids
centering elsewhere
otherwise
Near dusk: approaching
my house, I see
over the roof
the quartermoon
5and, aiming, walk it
down my chimney flue.
(1977)
No use to make any more
angels for the air,
the medium and residence of such:
gas is no state
5to differentiate:
come down here to
bird and weed, stump
and addled fear and swirl up
unity’s angelic spire,
10rot lit in rising fire.
1964 (1965)
Starving is so funny:
the cow, can
you imagine, the last shuck
gone, moos lean: the
5mule shrinks up and
walks small:
isn’t that funny: the
chickens are slices
of feathers on
10razor sandwiches: can
you imagine: children’s
hands become
knucklebone games:
the wind shakes
15humping to harvest.
The difference between
me &
nothing is
zero.
1977
We should think
we can get
by with a
setback or two:
5the lawn makes
a life of
starting over and
swirly bugs
in dusk air,
10prey, get where
they’re going
changing course.
When first snow
hits
the woods-edge
bushes, it’s as
5if the leaves,
recently lent
the ground, were
returning from
the sky to
10catch
the branches and
hold on again.
You can appreciate
this kind of rain,
thunderless,
small-gauged
5after a dry spell,
the wind quiet,
multitudes of leaves
as if yelling
the smallest thanks.