There’s a dead deer in the corn field
Where the hunter has gutted out
A hole to reach the inside
The womb of death
The void of once was
And a fawn walks aimlessly in the woods.

So let October evaporate into November
So bring the truck around the old fence
And pick up that dead deer
So cut two slits behind the knees
And pull upward, upward, upward on the rope
Toward heaven and shave the skin
For winter gloves and cut the meat
For a bursting belly and now all that
Hangs is a disembodied silhouette
From a hundred year old pine tree
So cut the legs, slit the skin
The muscles and the joints
Take a saw and saw away into the marrow
And let the truth fall to the ground again
Hear its loud thump as the dead dies away
And call out the cats from the cement basement
Let them linger in the pugnacious blood
See the blood congeal on their white fur.

So let the hunter be happy with triumph
See him grin in the fading light of evening
So let the poet withdraw into the nature of death
See how gloomy he looks there in the purple dusk.

This is the moment near
I leaned over and whispered
In his ear "my dog knows more
About this desert than you"
And even Leopold, oh his bones
Old, poked out from the bed of some
Twisted rock and smiled and cried.

The wet haired lady
With big thighs out
Of the pool comes
More than tired
To see me in the sun;
Even stone's have a name
Even math has a
Heaven, pure desert
Lonely and lonesome
Dry and free of full of
Form and thought sun
And stars.

Deep within the mountains a valley of green
In summer city of insects and towers of purple and
Yellow with the bees and butterflies preoccupied
With the joy of scent inspecting each door to find
The sweetness of living as the day descending
Sending rays through the spruce like some sort
Of king reaching for his laborers carelessly finding
His mark fallen short as the sunset frozen in
Lines of color spat white with roaming clouds
Yet the river gurgles even in the night and the song bird
Sings into the darkening hours a deafening cry
Hears a call back from some distant neighbor
“Will we survive the reckless night?”
As the howl of the mountain lion echoes granite
Sends a shiver through the ancient spine like
Some sort of expanding as the rooster calls the day
The lion births the night roaming silent paw
Across the nestled needles cracking
Sticks and pretend you are asleep because
Not even one eye on the ceaseless twinkle of
The stars will break your fear, wandering
Lonely as a deer in the midnight meadow
Head transfixed above the gas of space, the twist
Of galaxy and the silence of the forest leave me
Breathless, I hop from star to star like bees
Buzzing from flower to flower myself opening
The doors of sweetness, that unattainable nectar.
--I fall asleep in the meadow and wake to find the
Sun rising above another day and hear the cry of those
Same song birds “We have survived!” in soft sweet notes.

Yes, you think about those things
"The last time I bought this bottle of pills (you were gone)"... the mountain and its yearning. Knowing that the journey
Has been done, many times before.

What if, on the edge
Of oblivion
I spoke with golden eyes
Burning the horizon
Charting a new path forward
Through pain, joy?
What if, the mountain fell
Away into the flames
Of eternity, like the last
Embrace full of tears, sorrow?
Neigh, tomorrow the sun will
Rise, the clouds will grow
And in the thunderous chaos
Of this life, I will persist
Until the last word is spoken
The final breathe taken.

For how long did you know my father?
For how long did you help him make bread in my grandfather’s bakery?
Was he genuine like me?
Was my father shy? Was he timid?
Was he strong and bold?
Did he ever hide any secrets?
Secrets hidden deep within his flesh and bones?
Please think carefully about this
Did you ever see my ancient thoughts in his lonely brown eyes?
Did you ever know his brown hair would be my brown hair?
His eyes would be my eyes?
His flesh my flesh?
Did you ever think that my father was like a book waiting to be read?
And that I was his words invisible until now.

Steering wind
Of sleep and dreams
Guide this restless mind to morn
Not to sail among the waves
But crash along the rocky shore;
Take the restless young and weak
Take the lonely, cold and meak
But leave me here among the dread
Of nothingness and emptiness
To wake the dawnless, heavy stars
To guide my soul between the tides
Of life and death the cruelest course.
And lift the anchor of my fear
From the sandy bottoms of despair
To free the pain that is not there
For only a moment longer.

Along the flowing path
Of illuminated light, smiling
Beside the stream

Among the smothered stone
Beneath the shadowless mountain
The burning sun rises

Bloodless as Osiris
Drinking in the dusk
And laughing.

This is a dreamscape no
This is a horizon no
There is such a thing as hope but
It dissipates like the rain, this is
Poem a seed in the ground
If you close your eyes you
Can see it's flame

Like ships in the night
The armada of storms
Sail off across the horizon
Out onto the distant plains;
Booming and anguished.
I walk in the night electric
And feel a certain buzz inside
Cautious and wild, stirring.
The night is hidden from me
by the night, the young leaves ripple
In the empty wind.

Sometimes
The
Desert
Sleeps
Just like
I
Smile
The
Moon
Rises
The tide
Higher.
Cold
Blue
Stars
Look
Out
Atyou.
In
Another
Time
In
Another
Place
Your
Face
A flower
In
The
Meadow of
This
Improbable
Heaven

What remains in the space of death?
The crinkled mountains so resilient -
The battered shore ever-changing.
“A day full of rain”
“A net full of stars”.
In the distance, through the mist
The lighthouse rises and radiates
Warning of impending danger.
Through my fogged filled eyes
the truth pours out. A fern
begins to form.

Down in the canyon
Where the sun falls
Onto a stone, the light
Of autumn.
Down in
The shadow of the
Stone’s deeper signs
Small birds sing.
On the wind
I know the time
When everything dies
I know the time
When everything lives
On the wind.
The trees become themselves.
Quiet as deeper into
The night you go
Never leaving your feet
You float.

While our life
Expectancy continues to grow
We continue to die younger
Each time we open our
Eyes to a new day.
While the river
Remains frozen in the mountain
The birds retain the branches
Nearer to the sun
Without so many leaves.
Who is it, the one who comes
In the night by the lake
To take away all the dreams;
To open our mouths to the stars
With such a sudden haste?

I rose as a green fern on a tree
After the passing of the night storm and maximized the time of being present by being quiet
I was as quiet as death, so death
Couldn't hear me. And I drank
The air with a passion so
Crude as if to harness
The lungs to compromise. I rose
Above the rest, for the better part
Of the morning. Deep in the swamp
Hanging like a wrist waving goodbye
In the golden gleaming swamp
Waving goodbye so relentlessly;
Not afraid of when's next, or what.

I make a new circle with my mind
I have been here before but in a dream
I can remember the fluidity of the waves
The sand rolling across the rusty grasses
The seagulls screaming like children
The lull of a salty afternoon sapphire
In the shade of the live oak
Disappearing in the reality of waking
My eyes open slowly to something familiar
But now I am here on the beach, in flesh
Standing before an immense possibility
At the edge of a venerable beginning
With the sun setting over the watery brim
With the breeze rolling through the trees
My feet rested in the sand apathetically
Looking out over Pamlico Sound with wild eyes
Trying quickly to grasp what it is, its meaning
Its mystery before it fades away and slips
Into obscurity forever.

Not long ago the black ocean
Caught my eye the deep swamp
The lonely desert, starting on the
Edges but moving inward.

Yes the mountains in my mind
So ever rising from the horizon
Of my past, of my future
Seem to know no star, seem
To crumble in my waking, constantly.
What if, what if love held no fear
Like death, the way the stream flows
Forward and backward (remembering the rain).
The mud sun where once we came from
Rose up from the desert like a bruise
Like a black eye. And I remember passion
In strained muscles, exhaustion and composure
(the birth of an infinite healing) what if
That's how it flowed, reluctant?
The closing embrace of tears.

The stones
Heave outward
Broken
On the hill.
The roots
Twist tighter
Deeper
In the ground.
The branches
Arch upward
Higher
To a trembling sun.

How far do we tend to travel beyond death?
Many people say only a few thousand feet.
Can you see me there stuttering?
And what memories do we take with us
Downstream  but only a few time heavy stones?
Those is which we chose to reminiscence.
Love the roundness of gravity
And hope the shape of change.
I can only remember that which
Only takes me as far as
The distant shore.

There are faces in the stone
The cemented sand that face
The stumbling mountains
To the east, like prisoners
In prayer. There are
Stories here held loosely
In the empty rivers;
Afternoons full of
Electricity and rain
Winter nights cold and quiet
Days of endless aching wind
And mornings, fresh and new.
If you listen closely, you can hear
Them talking about such things as
Erosion, defiance
Moons and stars.

The corrosive canyon;
A precursor to hope,
Bent before me like a king
In dusty robes (how many
More years?). I felt the slow
Soft smile of the sunset
Slink away into the dusk
In one long smear of red.
I heard the coyote and the owl
Chattering back and forth
Beyond the broken horizon
Beneath the impalpable, stars.

It pours from our eyes
From deep within our memories;
These tears of summer clouds
This flood of our existence;
Eating away at the dusty rocks
Grinding against our bruised bones (these twisted epochs).
Ah, the flotsam of evening!
In purple and carmine streams
Marks the path through the reeds; Through the diluted dusk
To the windswept stars
To the elemental island of
Now

Written into the sand
A delicate heart; the broken
Shape of a thousand footprints.
Sunlight moves like water here
Sweeping down the arroyo.
Carved into the sand
An open hand; holding on
To a thousand lonely stars.
The long-lasting embrace
Maintained through centuries.
-
I think to a time when
The bones of galaxies have faded
And all of space is abandon, in the evening of the end.
When there is no light left
To guide and the only
Sound is that of the dead
Tiptoeing on the shores of emptiness.

There's a mountain in my mind
I've never been able to see
Beyond the farthest horizon
And I'm sailing away
Beyond the further shore
To where the ancient stars
Dance like fireflies in sky.
There's a story in the shells
Of those that have sunk to the
Bottom of the sea of those
I have loved shaped by
The waves of time.
There is a place in the pines
There is a space in my mind
Where even the wind won't blow
Where even sun won't shine.

every inch of earth and more
i long to touch and love and know;
like dusk the quiet fingers hold
the nervous children laughing.

sleet, too wet for a bird's feather
drowned the cold sound of dawn;
now quiet only the sun shines
golden rays through hairy pines

For many years now, I have
Thought of the concept
Of a single thing
A fox in snow, a hillside
Full of stones. I was here
And then there and
Couldn’t understand why.
For many nights now
I have been as lonely as a mountain
Listening to the rain. Wondering
In my sleepless rifts
Where did the days go?
How did the stars sway?

After the storm rolled by
The swollen edges of the swamp
Lifted their white wings to the night
In flocks of thousands. I watched
From the cypress as they became
The stars, burning in the farthest
Corners of my mind. Dreams
In the space between synapses,
Fizzled and died. Love was but
A question we hung carelessly
In the dense jungle air.

Physical burning wing
In motion the big bird
Flies into the woods
Like a flame extinguished;
The year is in rust and waning
The day in dusk and purple
And it's best we head home now
Back along the cow path
Over the glacier's disposed memories
(Still looking backward
My mind goes deeper into
The cold, dark forest)
To the steady fire waiting for us.

From a dream Cleopatra gets up and walks away again from beneath the trees in the swamp a thousand ibis fly away again, we think we know the horizon until death we, oh it is snow
The lack of rain, love on the last day
Either running into the pines or just leaving the island, we have that in common at.least

End. We learn how to remember, through tragedy
And rise from pain. A tree uprooted
The soul shaken - a life gone.
The birds came and the birds went.
The stars beyond our view ramble on.
Tears are wet against the cheek
This winter day is dieing, this
Winter day is done.  Remember
To love without regret, it's never too late to begin.

it's beautiful to look back
upon the canyon ascending
nice to dance among the stars
drink the shadows of mountains
I've known love, even more
the great ocean sipping the shore
the great swamp reverberating
like a distant drum. To see
the trees in dawn's empty light
to look upon the deeper forest
walk among the moraines
cry beside the sea, on the
evening ferry off island
traveling far far away

The rushing of water
Through narrow veins
Of stone, like marrow
To be disposed of
To get rid of
Or the dull ache
Of wind finely etching
The cemented sand lose
Like a surgeon;
These years the same, the same
Sometimes the raging flood
Of debris, in all its muddy glory
Sometimes, the soft tug
Of stars pulling inward
Ever so gently, like
A long forgotten memory

I went out to explore the night with my mind
Very delicately unweaving the onerous stitches of fear
To become as free as the wind, or say as free
As a bird in the wind. The thought of winter hung over
The town like an approaching glacier being
Very eminent, but not precisely clear, as if to leave us
In a state of perpetual dread (is pure freedom free
Of fear?) and grinding out the light. I wanted it to be
Then that I knew she loved me, walking beneath
The trees like giant balloons in the lampshade light
Swaying overhead, sipping in the night like
A fine cocktail before a fire, strolling through the
Streets and ally ways of the city brain. And perhaps it was then
When the lady whose car broke down outside of town
Asked for a place to stay was crying, that something
In the sky burst, like an explosion, seen but not felt.
The night was young, dependent on your age
And our love was young then too, much like
The first leaves of spring, or the first frost of winter.
Perhaps it was the intensity of the moment
The screaming cars, the vehement animosity
Of an open window, that lead me deeper into the
Mountains, walking beside a stream swollen
With the reflection of the loveliest of
Star blooms, the most delicate of flowers. It was then
And it wasn’t then. Just out of grasp, the mind reaching
Forward further.

Our lives are like
Those stones that
Escape out of
The hillside
And glitter in the sun.
Being heaved
From that hidden source
We arrive broken
And full of contradictions.
Exposed once again
To the forceful elements
Of love and fear.

Autumn
The sun rose like an old wave over
All the mountains that couldn’t contain
The light from which they came
A long time ago, yet the wary day was
Young and inexperienced in the season of
To shed a leaf, to feel first snow (ode to
the wiggling winds of change).
Love was both young and old and
In the hazy sky the light took on
More the color of an eternal being
Sitting down to read a book beside
A half open window, a fuming
Cup of coffee (oh to be both alive
and empty) more the color of
greeting than anything, a shy
"hello?"

The roots
          That twist
Around the stone
                 Will one day
        Loosen
The stone
           That twists
Out of the ground
                 One day will crumble
Into little more
           Than dust
And blow away
                  In the wind
Far across the ocean.
The earth
Too one day
           Will dissipate
Into nothing
                   More than gas
That will be carried
                       Across the cosmos
                           To start new beginnings
                                 And spread old roots

The mountain holds a lake
Like a tree remembers it leaves;
The way snow embraces dusk
And dread hangs onto hope.

The nation has no time to sigh,
Even though it should;
All the arching bones decay
As one in unison.

Me, well, dusk has a deeper touch
Than just the outward earth;
Bounded to the infinite
I'd say the weather is but fair.

It was all a blur
Of birds, a stirring of
Leafs and then
It was over
Like after a storm
Or between tides
A thousand seasons
A thousand embraces
Of one last goodbye;
Suddenly the silence
Of understanding
The calm dread

There are so many trees
On this mountain it's hard
To know which one is you;
But I can hear the snow fall
Through the heavy thought of spring
And know that you are out there somewhere
Standing defiantly.

The dusk is full of iron sleep

I walk through the naked aspen

The cobwebs of all this motion

In a cold blood sky mind.

To know that the sun always shines
And that the darkness always devours
Well then, that's true peace.

Where are all my thoughts behind the trees
Into the deepest part of the night, beyond
The edge of beginning  to love
Into the swamp of life, the great muck pool.
Behind the trees into the deeper night
Where the stars wander freely
(that’s where I am going). Beyond
The hills dressed in the gown of the moon
Beyond the craggy ridges of the giant
Who feel asleep crying. Beyond the street
The bank of trees are breathing in the musty light
Of the lamp, a group of birds huddled together
Feather’s ruffled in the wind.

I've seen so many pass beside
My sharper edges
I've felt the eternal night
Beneath my softer bones
Flow like water
(Kissed the eternal light)
The fire from which I was born.
I've watched them come and go
As I broke apart, as the stars
Above and below exploded
Breathed hard, harder
Going forward and backwards
Like a dream, it was a dream.
I was a stone beneath a tree
A bird on the limb
A cloud, disappearing into the horizon
A wave or two across the shore
A fish, a feeling quicker than a flash
Of lightening, my flesh transparent
My veins deep as time
(And you there for a moment)
Stirring like the seed
That began everything
There along the path
Which you happened upon
On the way to the lake
Beneath the mountain
Beside the pine (it was in the
Time of summer, smoke)
I took a week, a break, to discover myself down the long road
Toward the southern heat;
It hasn't began yet though
Tomorrow it will.

My dog dragged me through
The door into the night
Out into the cold wind.
My thoughts dragged me
Beyond the desert horizon;
The coals of dusk just ashes
The center of despair.
November's half gone
And its empty promises too
Gone like the wind in the night
Gone like the wolves in the woods

The only way in is through
In the swamp, full of thick
Muck. The only way out is
Above, the punctured sky
Of stars. My bones become
It’s thoughts, my thoughts
Begin to stir. Muffled wind
Through the naked cypress
Then the moon
Then no more

I went for a walk
Down a path
The day after all
The wind blew all
The leaves out
Off the trees
Onto the empty stream
Into the empty forest
And filled those cracks
With some pretty
Yellow for awhile
Before the snow
Came after dusk
And killed all those
Stars with dreams –
Everything was grey
And cold and I went
for a walk to get
further away

The sea knows a secret
I know the taste of
Time on its wave
Like those embraces
Beneath the mountains.
In the time of change
Even the heron
Follows the watery paths
To home. Oh those rotten
Old hills oh those sandy
Flower like feelings. My streams
Run down my cheeks
My streams run deep
And old.

I think of a heart
Scripted into the soft sand
Of a hollow day, in the evening
Of the year. Broken by
A thousand footsteps
(I’ve known many hearts like this)
When the aspen were both
Green and yellow. I think of
The juniper, almost vertical,
Clawed to the steep bank
As if they might walk up
And over, but knowing
Their true fate, as if to never
Be below (I’ve known many
People like this). I think of
A time when the bones of
Stars have faded and all
Of space is empty, in the evening
Of the end. When there is
No light left to guide and the only
Sound is that of the dead
Tiptoeing through the arroyo.

Coast
I
Let me take your mind ashore.
I will catch you with a net
Of stars. As if the light
Has no other choice, but
To gather. The hard-shelled pieces
Of your memory. I will lay you
Out upon the sand. Then the
Sun will rise.

II
The old oak with it’s
Many dark places
Felt like a home
When it rained.

The slow moving mouths
Of lichen swept like a great army
Across the broken bones of the mountain
And isn't that the way love came too
So quickly and showed its sweeter
Tounge to the iron of our desires?
The better question being though;
Were we born, meant to dig holes
Or fill them in? Even the stars,
In all their vastness, ask
that one.