In Memoriam

letter towards my father

a
miniscule
stillness near silence

he
falling away
spread-eagled in surprise

rippling
his everyday clothes

i
releasing a scarred
and helpless hand

we
have held
these years

across vast distance
spaces

each other

unknowable

beautiful

terrible

his clear blue
eyes

RMC 1921-2009

8/1/09

from Out of Darkness

Desert Fathers

dry path
light pack
rough staff
mark track

move free
breathe clear
far peaks
cold fear

you must fear God
the Fathers say
traveling always
towards your death

these things
helplessly
have I
ever done

high plain
earth swell
stones line
the ancient well

silent roar against the sky
eagles skirt the axis of its bore

the sun the stars
repeat their arcs

thin figures
starved in stillness
gathering darkness
one and one

a golden eye pivots
the lizard flicks its tongue

Our Father

silent shadow
under
fullmoonrise


1/16/09

from Firestand (2005)

Pan

wasted white milk seeps forth
the honey exceeds the hive

a warm sky covers the earth
the stones themselves too heavy to rise

the Great God Pan is alive
I don’t care what anyone ever may say

in the deep woods deep
underground cool

dark earth
slow roots

inaudible hiss and click
of myriad powerful hidden lives



Knock

there are hungers no meats can feed
the tigers crouch silent through green trees

for all that, the earth moves magnificently on
and your hands hold these simple tools

sometimes find sun
and dappled shade

smoothly working
in silent grace



Misplaced Concreteness

come to me I call
out in the open field

but what it is is wary
walks on slender feet
rolls like mist across the meadow
there only when I look away

is there a strong beast in the forest if I don’t see it

yes: only then

this is what the real work is like:
everything occurs by indirection

you point, excited: There! where the blue bowl
appears upon the table as if by magic

in some other world
instantly
children are dying in the windy grass



Live Rock

there is rubble in the ditches
cinders, charred wood flank the way
level to the cold mountains
clear along the line of sky

I touch their distance in my heart
every crevice, grain and stone
accurate, careless and exact
the air between us thin
piercing and empty of life

Here I would arrive
hungry, wasted and in pain -
climb the steep path slowly going numb
the cold calming passions
freezing fear
the rough stone cutting
reassuring into my palms
the bitter salt dries to crystal on my skin

I would die here, content
to be dismembered by the hawks
dried by the wind
my bleached sticks forgotten
among the watchful stone



Firestand

Fire roars down the well of the sky
the people flee in panic
all the air is clean and dry
the nothing clear for miles

Wake your eyes wide
breathe and stare
someone is clearing the stage
boiling the sea away

Stand up, man, on whatever rock you have
set your feet firm and stand
humbled and strong beneath
the fiery face of the deep

This is what is asked of you:
to stand despite the ravaged land
to stand in fear, in wretched grace
to grasp the blackened, wasted land

Witness
Measure

fierce frightened fragile candle
in a sea of holy fire



Fiction

a story we tell ourselves
to make sense of a world too huge

people can have whatever opinion
they want she said
but the facts are the facts

the fact is
that I have seen the blue flame

I have tasted its fiery rising
in the worlds
that give it space to rise

and to flame from out of the
nothing that is the fact
of its birth

from Eating Earth (2004)

Knots

In the field in fine weather
I know how the heavy chisel feels in my hand
how it cuts in cedar and in spruce
and how they smell
and the shiny smooth surface of a knot
how it focuses your attention that would
wander into some other place

Sitting sweaty and tired alongside the sweet
peeled logs my daughter brings me lunch
I remember the tough painful glory
of her birth - my being there, necessary,
fearful and confused - holding her mother’s
strong hands, knotted in mystery and in love

And now she feeds me bread and happiness:
hers, at helping me,
her father, finally at rest
among the things
of our common world



Walls

The stone wall is unshaded now.
The ferns might die in the strong light,
but the wall was there long before this forest
grew up. It marked the boundary then
too. So much weight. So much work.
They used oxen I guess, but still
that's a lot of hard work and long
long days. No grocery stores
then. But what I want to get at
is this tightness in my back and in my
gut. That's what made me think of the
wall. And all those stones. I have lifted some of them
so I know. What a job a wall like this is - how it huddles
low into the earth, all lichened over -
maybe the snakes will come out now and sun themselves.
They would remember this wall from long ago. They
would. Part of the landscape now - a natural object in a way.
It's not like anyone would make one
of these now - nobody would. And anyway
nobody could, here. Hell, most of the stones are
already in these walls - following the curves of the
hills - you can see - now that all the trees are out of
the way. It's kind of sad, really, in a way - thinking of those
old guys and their oxen and their walls
and their strong, cramped and bitter backs.



Hunters, Gatherers

the hunters have gone
over the horizon
on their hopeless trek
seeking great beasts of meat
a rich kill of blood
deep feast
we wish them well into the stars

we
have our hatreds and our fears
dark vegetal lives
sweet saps fleet birds
eggs
slow deaths bright
eyes
immersion
in tiny life, lives
in



Eating Earth

the first thing they do
is put pieces of the world
in their mouths

smiling, expectant
they have to be taught
how to stop

we don't eat earth
because the world takes time to ripen
fruit proliferate engorgeous
and we too

tender
too impatient to wait

eat the wrong things
in the wrong ways
at the wrong times

take a whole life
to learn the etiquettes
of growing
things



Home: Esse est Percipi

working hard all day and liking it
digging in the berries and the fruit
being tired drinking too much

but the world is full and rich
with the presence of these -

with their presence only
not ever them

only we feel attention
is being paid

this rounds out the world
gives a back to things
that you can never see
on the far side of the bowl

the world
alive now
from the
other side



Money

Come time
we step out and mingle
in the market

not lost as a child
buying for the first time
over some high counter

reaching up a fearful fist of money
for some cheap felted bear for tourists
throwing away your special silver dollar

a gift from someone
precious, faded,
who you can no longer quite recall

hurry
make up your mind
we have to go

the opening of that chasm is permanent -
even though you cried until, impatient, angry,
they pulled you again into the dark deserted shop

and you received your silent offering back
still warm in your damp and shaking hand:
the heavy moon, the eagle and the Lady

just that once in the cold and lonely northern woods
giving your treasure away for nothing
stands dark and fearsome

at the beginning
and the end
of every road



Fragment

A

dismembering undoes

does not fragment

and scatter fragments

το άπέίρον

old Heraclitus sits in the dust and laughs his dry laugh

dissolves himself
in another way

gazes direct at nothing
sees only from the corner of his eye


Ω

the phallus rises fleshy, monumental
under heavy sun

smiling, cyclopean, absurd, slapstick
and unknowing

lazy goats graze their boundaries on rocky hills
sinewy and unforgiving

seeing with eyes from another world
they move aimlessly and relaxed

seeking green blades arising random
from among the bleeding stones

Mythologies of Earth (2002) - Part III

The Day

Sometimes you find a smooth round stone
Warm and perfect in your hand.
Sometimes you hold it there all day
And your children make you smile and weep.

And you are on a rutted road to somewhere slowly
With a people who belong there.
And it may be that someone has died and there
Are small children running in the fields

On the hills beside the road.
And everyone decides to stop and lay the body down
And to call the children in.
They all decide to stop and sit for a while together quietly

In the heat of this, not the last,
Day.



These Men

Huge feet flat in heavy shoes
Thick hands for iron tools
The bigger hammer
The 5 foot bar always slightly bent
Always overdoing that harsh and unforgiving work

But the light at night is the stars
The air is clear when not from the east
Strong drink is good and warm and the room
Hilarious with claustrophobia
Explosive with laughter and women
Who look happy and healthy in bad light

These great men struggle and fight
They work into silence every day
And their sleep is dark, unbroken and
Refusing
Every night



Birth

Before, the old men stand.
The old men stand before.
Three old men are standing.
They stand before.

Chasm: nothing over it ever
Can be thrown.

Hoof and horn and rose.
And icy wind.

Each thing huddles and
Averts its gaze.

After, the old men stand.
The old men stand after.
Three old men are standing.
They stand after.

The trace of something swift
Exquisite, beyond the eye and mind

Leaping high into wind.



Glass

I
a whole life spent
trying to get inside this world
having come from somewhere else
let me in you cry let me in
face pressed against the glass
while the silent nurses and the doctors move away
while the violent yellow buses draw away
while all the stone-faced women step away

you see everything so very clearly
all the edges gilt with fear and longing
each bright gift unbuyable behind the glass

you see yourself playing ball with fathers,
traveling over barren lands, failing to love,
drinking harsh spirits, being 18
30 then 40, 50
writing this behind that glass


II
the soft god spills his seed
into a crystal hand
the pool reflects his clearly focused
glassy eyes


III
the women look on: tough mother
spider mother gentle mother
they would cradle you in their oceans
too close for comfort or for free:
and laugh - knowing you from inside


IV
no one can help you
now
there is no pill
no person

only you the seed the women

and the glass



War Hero

My father isolate
And confused, his cheeks
Soft and blessed now with white

His eyes a bright & laughing blue
Shining from the life of someone
Who hasn't caused so much
Unintended pain

Lost amidst the wreckage of the women
He has loved so hard
So imperfectly

For whom he would have
For whom he has
Given his life

Mythologies of Earth (2002) - Part II

On Abstraction

(for Bill Carpenter)

well you know,
its these damned images
if that's what they are

real things
like salt on the oak table in the morning sun
refuse to be what they are

become something else
something huge
just by writing them down

they swell into vast oceans evaporate
in aeons of torrential rain
leaving the taste of their tears in this tiny crystal cup

and the sweat of rough men, illiterate,
felling great trees, the smell of their pungent
sap filling the air, and their sweet

dreams of wanton women in dark cities
by that warm sea under the mourning sun
their passions spent, sleeping,

and the great trees lie silent amidst
a wreckage of their dying leaves



Discovery

The world is not made of fragments
Of some larger whole.

They are entire
and of themselves.

Each a single knock
At some great
Impassive door.



Swine

My muddy pig
Has wallowed
Plugs pits

His evident hind end
Brittle with mud

If I grabbed a ham
He would be stubborn and strong
Would kick like the devil
Roar like the dog that he is.

Both his hind legs huge in my hands.
To hell with the pearls.

from Crossing (2001)

Crossing

we keep standing at, or nearly
at the threshold

crossing is moving
into darkness or into light

in light there may be
fierce noises anguishes and fright

the knives may flash
the blades may be bright

entrails burst out steaming
bloody stumbling to a
thousand cloven feet
scatter thunder in their crossing

making bright light
making heat



At the Center

starting
all
over

again
and again
again

This is it.
Isn't it?

The long hollow howl of the man
the wild dog at night under the moon.

So hard
to hear.

That long, slow hollow howl.
Your shoulders fall slack.
A settling whispers
over the fields.
Air rolls cool down the wooded hill.
The soil sinks lower in the night.

The rising of the sound
lifting out across the open ground.
It is not the fear, or the emptiness of the voice
or the long slow swelling of the icy sphere.
It is not the dying echo or the memory of it, here -

but the utterly naked,
silent origin

Virginal:
rising

out of
dark

the first
forever lonely
holy
breath



Clear Soup

Stirring clear soup

looking in, hot and steaming
smelling marrow
fat and death -
rich vapors of the axe

Stirring clear soup

red eyes see you with a hot surprise

the sound rough carrots make
under the knife
the sting of garlic-bitter eyes

Stirring clear soup

old hands hold
wooden spoon

death comes
too soon



The Back Forty

reaching every morning
out for knotted speech

bowl hole howl

spade work the birds above
rough fields need uprooting
burning brush in dry weather
blackens ground

white ash lifts in the wind
fear of fire storm dry
hear birds white cry

roots and rocks rise
more every year



Swarm

The vacant eyes of ants
come out of nothing
and swarm the world
seeking what it is that they seek.
We kill them in our ignorant sleep.

What do they want?

Children are eager for the world.
We know they will die
and yet fear for their lives - that
they will live as we did, moving
senseless and seeking over the skin
of a tremendous sleeping beast.

Mythologies of Earth (2002) - Part I

Suicide Bombers

Like them
I would wrap myself
with power
and step out into the world
primed.

But I
would walk into an open field
in cloudy weather
hearing the wind
and the voices of birds.

I would want my crater
to hold a great oak
400 years hence

the memory of my blast
receiving raindrops
over numberless late summer leaves.



The Civilized Man's Surprise

You have to stop making things up
and filling the world with them

making and saying
and pushing things around

you come home to find your rooms full of jackals.
Jackals! Where did they come from?! You didn't make them up.

They only slink out when you are busy
looking somewhere else.

Come home my friend, and find the
lions behind your green front door.



The History of Ideas

I am not all the things that I have been.
I am not what I have thought.
Do not ask me what I think or
who I am. But only look:
in this place between us, where we are.
there is a footprint filling slowly:
the waters swirling from below.



Didact

Hit this :
hit this hard :
I hold it for you
on the block
with both my hands.

Hit this. Hit it hard.
I will turn it.
Hit it again. and again.
and again.

I will now let it go.

Now :

Hit this :
hit this hard.

Harder than ever I can.

Let me hear your labored breathing.
Let me look into your swimming eyes:
A mind of fires and anvils

My sweet girl of the throbbing night.
You turn.

I watch you glide away
mated with the dark.



The Rats

the rats run down the tunnel in the dark
and I follow
hearing their whimpers and their squeals
we go down together
pausing now and then to raise our snouts
and sniff the closing air
passageways proliferate and so do we
streaming inevitably down
rooting with our million teeth
seeking what can be eaten
and pricking our million ears
to hear a distant music
disseminate through the
dense reverberate earth



In Final Calm

in final calm
bright light is dim
sharp pain numbed
in a kind of death

nothing I can say gets this right

clear fog
accurate confusion
nothing happens

a worm merely wriggles in the mud
the body merely continues

but some spark seeks tools
and something to do with them

as if to shift one stone
and set it just slightly higher
were all I could imagine
and were enough



Creation Myth

mud
and one
stick

the stick
makes one mark
in the mud

a ring of marks
in soft mud

a mound
a ring of marks
the stick upright

an edge of water
lapping gently all around
the edges of soft mud relax
into still water

.


eternity


&


the idea
of
yellow



Refusing Beauty

The image of a perfect rainbow
seems more real now than it did then

I refuse these things
pushing them away
refusing to suckle
at the richness of the world

smothering in the fear
of drowning hopelessly
in a sea of ravenous
rich milk



Hunger

it's not God you're looking for

if you found him
he would be lost

you've been picking up everything
all these years
and putting it in your mouth

cold & hungry
treeless tundra
leading North

Yellow light
in the window
of the twilight hut.

The voice behind the weathered door
has Nothing. Lives on silence.

On the sweep of the
constantly
emptying
wind.



Loss

Life is a history
of accumulated loss -

it must be forever so

let it go let it go
let it go let it go

There is nothing else you should be doing.
Your only job is to stay here: and watch.

See how the dog curls around in its bed? We
never get comfortable, spin forever

feel the black bull rise and
rushing past we grasp a horn
and hang on for dear life: he must be going somewhere!

But the woman has given away all her things.
Everything but the bowl
that fills with water
as she sings.



Argument from Design

Some intricate parts
fit together, hinge and move
toggles & knobs
some hum

clean & perfected, smooth
silent & unknown

this fits snugly into a world

A leaf uncurls
required by deadly fusions
in the hearts of stars

The black mud is
the segmented worm

The Speaker sits cross-legged
at the edge of night

beyond silence
beyond crucible
beyond form

from Standing Fast (2000) - Part II

Persistence of Memory

An old woman bends above a musty trunk
dark with age and battered. Her hands are large
and thick and swollen with husbands
and children, the nails corrugated and worn
like the roof of the attic far above
the empty house. They move, unhurried,
among familiar hidden things
never for a moment forgotten -
never in births and deaths, in unendurable loneliness,
or in the tedium of waiting.
Tiny shoes, some clothes fragile with age and dust, a pencil
sketch of someone with eyes from far away.
The shoes dance by themselves in the failing light.
The fabrics rumple in the corner in fear. The far away eyes
come close and threaten the husbands and the children

the half moons in the heavy fingers are luminous
through dark trees.



First No

The wind is rising.
The seas are cold and green.
Mountains thrust like fists,
glittering schists flashing blackness to the sky.

No flowers: Lichen,
crust and wind and sea.
Boulders roll impossibly down.
Heavy snow thunders from the roof.

Stark eyes open in a child of stone
who sees the clouds part and writhe and move away
and deeper cloud and deeper cloud
and deeper move away.

He sees the ships in torment on the sea.
He sees the minds of men that crash and break upon the rocks.
He sees the cold and ice and knows it
as a song and as a home.

The silence of him is his home.
The power of him is his bone.
His passion fills the space around him:
making things be.

Light lies bright and keen around him:
the luminous grace and beauties
of his denial. Beware
the hands of the man.

from Motive Forces (2003)

Live Birth

Gliding iridescent bodies
Enormous through
A child's microscopic eyes

They are the world in the sunny room
Warm green waters mumble softly
Pulse with light and life

A shimmering swollen mother births
Translucent dreaming commas who drop
Uncurl and dart instinctively away

Her vacant eyes encircled with silver
She turns and eats them with no pleasure
Unless you hold her netted

And let the quickening droplets through
Beyond her startling mechanical mouth
Where they are free

To waken gently downwards
Perhaps in time for each to meet its own
Particular unpredictable fate

from Standing Fast (2000) - Part I

Sorting

The water of the stream runs like light
down the mountain from within.

Grains of sand arc
and glitter and flash away.

Pebbles shift, break free and roll
to fetch up against a solid stone again.

The perfect water curls and cuts
the base away.

Liquid ice cups like hands,
opens like children,

digs like crying,
and undercuts vast boulders

as they settle imperceptibly
towards the sea.



One Track in a Desert of Sand

I stand and take up something in my hand.
I will not bow to them again.
My face is scarred and lined -
spaces swirl within me.
Something makes the spaces
or gathers them in their dance.
I do not go to them:
they come to me.
I am no master.
I am no slave.
I do not run
away.

At the center of the dark
a swift and perfect calm:

vast shattered obelisk

indecipherable pitted glyphs

lion roaring echo

after-image of a thousand suns


Rude scratches on fresh rock rising from the sand.

Moving nearer:
an old man,
dressed simply

who never dies



The Well

My father dug it himself
with a short-handled shovel.
Fifteen feet to bedrock,
and lined with laid-up stone.

Later on, it went dry
every year and we lived
out of rain barrels
in the dry times,

and from water carried over
from neighbors we otherwise
knew only a little. Rain barrels
where I almost drowned the kittens,

and neighbors
who suddenly left one day
and moved
to Mexico.

I stand now at the bottom of that dusty well
and see them eating salsa and fighting bulls
under a festive, laughing
yellow sun.



Rain Clouds Moving Low Over Water

I used to know a number of things.
I could talk with anyone, not
listen, mind jumping from one electric
fact to another, seeing
webs, leaping like a winged runner, feathers aflame
and eager to grab your hand and drag you,
dazzled and unwilling, across the sky.
The grace of running was beautiful
and the intricate patterns of the web.
The arrow through the heart was keen.

[Here append a magnificent list of all the things thus seen.]

Now
I sit and listen as you speak, not
hearing, sluggish,
some huge fish too tired to rise to the fly,
but hungry with an old hunger,
smooth dead eyes watching above
as the ripples spread out
in great swelling zeroes
from uncountable drops of rain.

Your words echo in vast caverns.
I follow the sound of them:
a music long before meaning
sweeping me, eyeless,
out to sea.

from Searching for Beast (1999)

Genesis

To create a world is a human desire.
God doesn't have it.
Being infinite S/He puts All into each tiny being.

The universe happens by default.



We

riffles sing over bright stone
wind moves through high leaf
bird calls over mountains

staccato rains
mice leave trails under snow
& in the mould
hollow deer beds in the Spring

the earth hums under the sun


and we

we

we be knotted and silent

while

a fierce white shaft of light
screams upward
from the tops of our heads



The Law

the quiet sound of dead things

brittle cold
like a frozen kitten

the dead eyes of fishes, road kills and

my old dog hit once and killed so dead -

my mother - so afraid of dying she
spent her whole life dead -

this clutter so confusing with the flesh.
so thick:

Bones are cleaner
white
and smooth.


THE LAW SAYS:

eat this dead
flesh, first.

from Boundary Conditions (1997)

This Work

It isn't automatic writing:
I did cut the head off
the carcass of the dragon,
although this may have been a mistake.

It isn't a broken form of prayer.
It isn't broken or a fall.

Not good or bad
but merely necessary

as living among people is
as washing your face
as sleep is
as killing in order to eat
as death is.

If you cut yourself or are cut
you bleed.

When you hear breathing in the woods,
or a cry for help, you

stop, alert.

Something you see out of the corner of your eye.

A voice in a language of darkness:

by stopping, sometimes
we stand on the edge

and sob -
holding the dragon's bloody head
in our hands.



Weather Report

black tears pool on the pillow
teeth fall from their sockets
jaws gape in a rain of sand
dry winds howl in another world

no moon

from Animals Dreaming (1996)

Old, Stone

Old women old men
stooped and stepping careful
in the sun. They have been
married for one hundred years.

Moving past me, three
feet away, growing rounder,
melting to all fours, their
smiles and eyes affix me to
the earth, the long tails,
the scales, they slither away.

The careful measure of the red
bricks within the walk, within the walls:
edges worn and rounded,
chipped to show the sand, the grit
inside the solid form. Grass
grows within the dusty cracks. Ants
tap the world there with their ears.

They hear me: they are in the
marrow of my eyes, tapping,
hearing with my ears. Weeds
grow out of the crevices of my body,
crumbling like ancient mortar,

fluted columns, half buried
Aphrodite, limbs shifting,
supple:

astonishing lizards
too fast to see.



Whales

My hands lie on the heads
of children. Their moving hair
so fine and touches
my fingers like
the wings of wrens.

Their eyes swim
around me:
fireflies in the dusk.

My hands float like whales,
huge and thick
through gold clouds
in blue sky.

The airs of autumn
descend,
the robes of some
great man,

and gather quietly
at my feet.

from Enormous Hands Forever (1994)

Six Archaic Fragments


I
I run in bright green tunnels.
My legs are very smooth.
The edges of this enormous
small water ripple
with a chorus of voices.


II
Face upward in this
night swells
a sudden void
rising silent
fast and holy dark.

I have no time to say goodbye.

I will never speak
of the bone
below
my face

or

of the dryness
of my mother's skin.


III
I hold the head of God
in my small hands.
The clay rests warm
and soft on my palm.
The long hair trails
gently down.

Mute and eyeless
we know ourselves
only from within.

We are each other
in this still
bright room.


IV
In a room of eyes and whispers
there is no wall against my back.
The room is too bright.
The sky
too high.


V
Three holes
in gravel
for three
brown bulbs.

Green shoots rise
among the stones

from This Body Is Pieces of the World (1992)

Hunters

Dark naked bodies
withered limbs,
project above this
perfect level plain

resting on nothing
and thrust like iron
against the empty sky.
Their angular grace

and silence, the long
elegant shafts slant
across their shoulders.
Each tiny crucifix

sharp on the horizon.
They move swiftly past,
their bodies pass through mine
raising no dust.

The space they leave behind
is filled with
the desperate sobbing
of gods.



Anatomy of Meaning

Things are what they are.
There is nothing to say.

We shuffle along
in black coats
in black hats
down white streets.

Things are what they are.
There is nothing to say.

Dust of animals dust
breathing this breath
dying this death
mute thrust pounding
silence.

Things are what they are.
There is nothing to say.

I kill my mother.
I kill my son.
I rip open my belly
and the demons come.

Things are what they are.
There is nothing to say.

Twisting suspended
between black and red
my dry mouth speaks
a speech of the dead.

Things are what they are.
There is nothing to say.

They understand each other
perfectly.



Cup

see this cup
round handle
smooth rim
my finger moves

in circles these
are the circles
of the stars
I trace here

in this room
close to you
these circles
have been traced

for thousands
of years
these dark
circles spin

these circles of stone
endlessly empty

raised high
by silent hands

drinking starlight
in dim times



Possessor

On slow days
I take things off dark shelves
and dust
and polish and arrange.

They are worn smooth
from the passage
of many slow days.

Sometimes a woman will arrive
in brief warm air and sun
until the screen taps lightly shut.

She will take something home.

I will miss it
on these spare shelves.