Say I’ve been 1:20 when
Politics is brought up call me
A Flaming liberal then.

Would it make you less depressed then
To know that in a world of hate
**** and death, there is a rock
Out in Utah that no eyes
have ever seen.

Not to soften the edges
Of evil
             but

A tree in Nevada, full of
Wind.

A moon gone at dawn
Stars, stars spilling canyons!

When love comes back to you, how
Many seasons will have passed?
Sun moon and mountain
Rain wind and snow.

What great silence lies between
Is now the reason for your happiness;
Though under no moon the vast
Expanse escapes you.

Look out into the world and see the
Fleeting colors before you I can
Tell you they are the clipped feathers
Of time.

And when I go then how sad will it be then
When the eternal forest changes from night
To Day will you be there in the back of
The hospital crying then under a ceaseless
Sun of an eventual goodbye will it be then like
The far corner of the woods or will it be rather
Like a thousand faces you decided never to
Look at. Puddles of rain, patches of snow. Will it be then like a beetle on a
Slow day when the only exit was a door out
Into oblivion? I decide then not to think of the times
When I turned on the front porch light and you were
Just outside of view. Will it be then?
Like leaving, rather on a slow day in say march

I rearranged my room but I could
Not rearrange the stars I bought a blue
Towel for the bathroom and I tried to
Forget about you but I could not.
I am more snipe when I drink
This is not a drunk poem…lies and lies
And lies. I rearranged my room but I could
Not rearrange you.

If you would like to write a poem run away
Into the far field of September choked with
Sunflowers full of bees become small become
More or less an endless possibility become
Light become dark, follow the coyote through
The junipers and see the stars. If you would like
To write a poem move to the desert develop
A sadness that can only be moved by a devotion
To the colors of the rain and devour hours
Of afternoons like a mountain gathering
Clouds gather truth. If you would like
To write a poem begin with the end
Draw a circle in the sand of some dead
River and then erase it, slip into October
Unnoticed and as the days become shorter
Become closer, remember what it's like to cry.

Maybe I will be around to tell them living that
The end is not the end show them my atoms
Flowing on through time backwards towards
The end maybe I will be a river I will be
A river then that flows on through and
Cascades into the endless emptiness of
Beyond time I will be like a bird there
A bird that waits to tell people the
End is not the end I will fly away again
The smallest parts of me somewhere
I will show them with their own existence
The beauty and horror of it all I will
Be like a river then like a bird there too
Singing two songs two songs to them