When this mortal frame does falter,
If there be left a body still to burn
Cast my ash from the cliffs of Dover
For on the winds I shall return.
Though my soul may be lost to water,
Bones bleached and turned to dust
My heart will soar across the forests
Climbing mountains in the dusk.
Then as the daylight rises
And darkness gives way to light
I will cast these eyes, one last time,
Across the shores of life.

An honorable human relationship — that is, one in which two people have the right to use the word “love” — is a process, delicate, violent, often terrifying to both persons involved, a process of refining the truths they can tell each other.

It is important to do this because it breaks down human self-delusion and isolation.

It is important to do this because in doing so we do justice to our own complexity.

It is important to do this because we can count on so few people to go that hard way with us.

from  On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose 1966-1978

let's believe winter
and the sledgehammer that
protects the flame of night
there are layers upon layers upon layers
mixing mingling confusing combining
colluding to obscure the dawn of mind
all is together and yet only fragments
roam around searching
for their other half in the poliphony of darkness

he is a spinning man
he spins himself into laughter into tears
powerful visions and sweet oblivion
while rushing outside of days
to find his spin
searching for a new vibration
an incantation of the living
while light is improvising in his shoulders

there are spaces in between the patterns
thare are hidden passages in between the thoughts
he is busy to explode
or maybe these are the leather hands of his father,
full of transactions
I see smiles killed before meaning
the magma of danger in the secret chambers
some white lies, blue lies
purple lies never
he is a hunter reading the signs of miracle
cunning as an uninvented night

I see him in a dark room
full of waves of moaning
and sometimes silence attacks him
with thousands blades
and he can't bear himself
by himself
with these heavy startles

I see him in the dark room
camera obscura
developing the image
of his unknown heart
of silence
lightness
true laughter

These trips by the county boys,
Being further deputized as burly, armed elves
Tended toward the grim,
Taking them on roads way up in the hills
Where pavement was the stuff of fantasy
And the home-sweet-homes
Were ancient pock-mark and rusted single-wides
Or jerry-built additions uneasily affixed
To some abandoned hunting camp or outbuilding,
Third-hand rugs or tarps covering
Hard ground, possibly augmented with a sprinkle of sawdust,
And you learned not to do more than exchange hellos
With the parents (this just one more minor indignity,
One more for-today-only handout,
The toxic mixture of resentment and self-recrimination
Never far from the surface) and head for the kids
As quickly as politeness allowed, the smiles
(Sometimes positively beatific, others suitably wan,
Knowing that tomorrow would be another day
In a series of just another days)
And upon leaving one such place, a couple of the boys
Heard an incongruous tinkling, this place
Far enough from town and insulated by bluff and pine woods
Where it couldn't be from St, Mary's or Faith Baptist,
And turning the corner toward where they were parked,
They happened upon a black bear,
Improbably wakened and wandered from some nearby cave,
Toying with some improvised wind chime,
Comprised of old graters, 50s-issue percolator stems,
Silverware liberated from some Denny's or school cafeteria,
And as they backed away to seek
Some alternate path to their vehicle, the younger of the pair opined
Must be some angel getting his wings, hey?
To which his partner, who knew these hills
And their sundry denizens all too well replied
You get that bears attention,
You're mebbe gonna find yourself on the waiting list.