Although I hardly gave it a thought
I didn't really doubt
our miniature juniper, a bonsai,
would survive our desert vacation.
                                                       ­   It likes the dry
air of our home, needs water
once a week at most and seems
meditative and active, both. While away
I rediscovered my love of agaves -
                                                          sotol­ and century
plant - met Mortonia and became
reacquainted with squawbush, its citrus
drupe which makes traveling the long horizon
of the desert uplands endurable.
                                                      ­    Live oaks - emory,
wavyleaf - dominant and regally spaced
giving ground to mesquite only on the sere
sand flats. I counted and drew inflorescenses,
spikelets, florets, awns but grasses
                                                         ­  remain a mystery
their microscopic parts. This year
I'll study, give them serious thought before
our Spring starts. The cactus wren was the one
bird I could be certain about. Sunsets
                                                         ­  made me sorry
the desert is not my home. But the ocotilloes
flowered before we left and that made up
for the vicious attack of a hedgehog cactus.
Impressive, ponderosa pine and Arizona cypress
                                                         ­  the canyon canopy
watered with snowmelt and along the high cliffs
limestone formations predating our arrival by
ten million years of weather. Newspapers
kept us aware humanity had not accomplished yet
                                                           the end of history
and that was fair. The planes were full of citizens
who no longer applaud upon landing. Snow flew,
not a pinyon pine or manzanita within two moons
walking. On the dining room sideboard, waiting,
                                                        ­   our miniature juniper.

Dinner with old friends:
salmon with red cabbage, asparagus, Caesar's salad, penne
      with broccoli, two white wines.
Jane Jacobs could analyze how it all got to our table
or even how their daughter came to us from Cambodia.
The economy or market bringing a thing of beauty, the farms,
      the trucks,
such comfort. The ancients knew this too
yet we are anxious about famine, genocide and nuclear war.
How can we organize (govern) ourselves to end self-imposed
      suffering?
That Quebec and Puerto Rico may secede peacefully at any
      time a majority chooses is a source of pride. Why not
      Kurds, Chechyns, Tibetans and Armenians?

Difficult to write a poem about it. At table, candlelight, we
      debate
or whine about the other side winning and making a mess
of our lives. The election could be stolen, tampering with
      voting machines,
what policy question does that possibility raise? War in Iraq,
school testing, prison population. Religion, the abyss
      surrounding the
little promontory life.

It'll all work out in the end. Go to your daily practice, be a
      good citizen.
Another failed effort to write what I mean. Such confusion, yet
two white wines.

Wet nights, warm days are what we want in the summer
      noosphere.
Man's mind one with weather.
If this is true, life is good, or will be good.
Can I be encouraged that my sons will find mystery on the
      planet
as I did?

How sweet the slow spring! May already and the canopy
      not out yet.
Woods quiet all winter.
Now I can't distinguish the many bird songs from where I sit.
Red maple flowers and first sugar maple leaves are, to me,
      the Christ child
that's been coming.

The ancient poems and the new make the 1/10 inch of annual
      topsoil
from carbon dioxide loading.
As a humanist I want everyone pursuing happiness; as a
      naturalist
I sometimes pray for man's destruction. As a rationalist I admit
I lack data.

O to play slow and sure, even when the tune is fast. Inside an
      aquifer
of love for the audience.
Not to fear or even necessarily obey the changing wind's
direction. Being here I breathe and make the atmosphere as
      seen
from outer space.

The song of the world will often take you far from yourself.
      There
will be no self. How will you know yourself?
By knowing thyme and dandelion, the blue jay from the hawk,
the heron in its swamp, black cherries and the one pear at the
      junction of the trails.
They are yourself.

Why make a sound or noise
or do anything to the page?
Unison playing from polyphony,
music evolves toward simplicity.

Gould's assertion that complexity,
NASA, is no more certain than a drunk in his city
weaving, heaving his guts into the gutter;
by any measure, evolution's favored bacteria.

Therefore, the earliest poem taking joy
in abundant crops and the lover's body,
2K B.C., followed by Yeats' Lapis Lazuli
offers the completest hope to us, easily,

for living this life without God's help
or even probability's. We meet
in the meeting house, argue and pray. We sit
with the dead who gave their genes to whelp

ourselves. Today, and then, the one question is
What is the polity's interest in the private soul?
Being free means belonging to the loved ones.
O the individual, alone, cannot be whole.

Governance evolves to democracy,
man accepting sole responsibility
for his thoughts, his wants, his words. Pure,
vibratoless genes from a polyphony of wars.

Spring. Same plants, same order.
Monday morning, open for business.
Tractor-trailers, day care centers.
Every leaf that’s coming out is out.

To tonight’s town meeting I will go unaware and foolish.
It’s delicious, the unimportance of my feelings.
Even our particular war was small.
Europe had one last a century.

Hubble photos of events 13 billion years ago
Do not put me in mind of the species’ insignificance.
Just the opposite having witnessed the universe’s birth.
But birth from what preceding state? God again rears his hoary head.

They say one must let go and will let go,
God will decide what tragedy you need.
Not every seed becomes a flower,
Not every branch breaks out like a prosthetic trombone.

While the ancient Romans wrote of love
The ancient Britons wrote of war.
The Romans should have been perfecting their republic.
No god could do that work for them.

The November moth's the fall cankerworm--Alsophilia pometaria--
Slender-bodied, beige, beginning life as the well known inchworm.
In our war more children may have died than would have had
      the tyrant lived in fear and awe.
We can never know because we conquered.

Rereading the poems of others
and my own. Community across
time and graves. What's left
exceeds in significance
one's last moment. Yet
his last moment must have been
exceedingly important
for the poet.

Nothing he did that day will seem meaningful.
While we prosecute the war
a pileated woodpecker and red squirrel
compete for sunflower seeds.
A winter slow
to assert itself.
I can still see my mother's father and his bowl
of filberts, almonds, walnuts
quiet weekday mornings.

Both grandfathers read sports
pages religiously. I don't know
if my grandmother who gave me the
anthology of, to date, dated
unreadable poems read poetry.
I remember my mother's mother spoke
rarely as an animal.

Writing but not knowing where I'm going
unlike Joan Didion justly
cannibalizing candidates
who didn't read the Constitution, Bill of Rights or
Federalist Papers. It's late,
I have not vacuumed or shopped for food.
Instead I reread
Phil Levine's Salami.

My confusion comes from too much doing. During the news
eating cheese and crackers, drinking wine, thinking the world
needs me.

Or the falling leaves, the days shorter but so much brighter.
How the cloud cover of the canopy has lifted to reveal
maybe God.

The longest continuous democracy may end in another
      theocracy.
A bunch of voodooists with their hocus pocus blessings
and understandings.

Bombs and poison. Grief. Chiseled, tearless face.
Chants gregorian. Her sad, clear, soulful missives from
the city.

Unbelievable acorn crop this year! Skate on them
like marbles. Last year was a maple year. The ash crop
significant, too.

But not the cherries. Or a single pear. Blackberries
held back too. Sure the towers were a violation, but they
      came to
hold community.

One stands not apart or alone but an individual within
his or her platoon. Committed to the mission and survival of
the platoon.

Fedex leaves a package. There is or is no anthrax
in it. It is our disappointment as Americans that the world
      cannot
be trusted.

Yes, New York is the enemy and brother of Kabul. How
does one reconcile those differing communities and be a non-
violent human?

With words. Wendell Berry's words. And service such as
the secretaries of state give, leaving when one's time and work
is done.

Staying in the diatonic. Agreeing first on rules of engagement.
Then engaging. Not stopping the fight or thought or song until
      the fight
is done.