A bird sounds like a squeaky gate
and then I realize it is a squeaky gate.
Things pass out of my mind
with new names and associations
which helps the woods grow denser.
I don’t really have time
to be old fashioned.
I drop my pen in the stream
next to a red spring leaf
already rehearsing for the fall.
The main thing I do
when it strikes
is walk.

Slowly I learn
not to cram too much
pleasure into beauty.

The mountain becomes microscopic
when the sun shines on a leaf
or the ripples of a shallow stream.
The leaf has the precise shadow
of a winter stem on its white tongue
and the ripples make the stones
look like little dwelling places.
The mossy one I kneel upon
is like a carpet of fresh ancient forest.
A wind rises from on high
ranges over ranges…
There is still so much
possibility.

The world grows many times over
as the eye sees more than its sight.

I make faces and fingers
out of the stones and branches
and my own face in the water
is feline, a primitive mask
I take off for shining water underneath.

I want to do something with the wind.
Make it into something my rib cage can sing.
I want to go where it goes
all at once all the trees bowing
not to me but to he who passes through me.

I created a joy stronger
than the sway of happy and sad.
I saw the moon part the trees,
then sit in their leaves,
then sink
              lost in their past.

The wind blew all night.
Still the mountain stands.

The wind blows yellow
the wind blows blue green
the wind blows night
back into day.

The wind is a thought
thought long ago
that caught on like wild fire
and still thinks it blows.

I say the wind but I mean something else.
I may mean your hair, how the grasses
draw inspiration from it for flowers.
All these things are arranged as the wind leaves them.
No matter the order we take them they lead us back around.

Think of a word
         then just a letter
                      then let the letter
          be just an outline
with more space
          inside it than out.
Then let the wind
         come and rearrange
                      the emptiness without
         with the emptiness within.
This is where we begin.