To the gods, the individual won't matter.
But we've said No to that. Here, you count.

Perhaps the gods, their tornadoes and weapons of mass terror
Are stronger than us. But we can read and count

And our music is more ethereal and real
Than theirs. They must divide to conquer us

But we have realized division is a form of multiplication
And have multiplied. Now there are too many

Of us to count. But we have learned there are
More planets in the universe than people on the planet.

A planet for each one. But we would rather stay
Together, continue to discover what we're living for.

Every human, and every animal, will count. And then
We'll invite back even the gods themselves.

Certain days planned to be eventful
I look forward to for weeks, setting
and characters, and the work days march forward
toward the horrible or pleasurable
and the day comes, it comes without hesitating or hurrying
although I hurry and hesitate
and when it is here, going by
during my hesitation or hurry did I
think what I wanted to ask?

Fowl meadow grass - Glyceria striata - the striations
on the lemma. Drooping rachis
a weeping willow of a grass.

Recurring periwinkles, myrtle, Vinca.
Helicopter petals. Evergreen leaves.
Escaped from gardens, alien or native?

A little further by the spruce stand
a new mustard, cuckoo flower - Cardamine -
with pinnately compound leaves. What a find!

A good day turns bad.
After you've died, one of them dogs digs up your grave.
You may sit in the rain and think.

Maiden pink.
The dark circle inside the flower
a g-string or garter.

O to fail well. To lay low. To live long.
To run slow. Feel the hill. Pressing down.
Do less. Until one thing's done well.

Having not done the things I wanted to do
and the things I've done not being what I wanted to do
I sit here looking at lichen on the north side of trees.

Black-capped chickadees
cheerful and truthful expression
grouped in platoons, sharing the point.

The tribes travel together
first finches, then chickadees
following the squirrels every morning.

What luxury, abundance! Handful after handful
of grass seed thrown, into wind.
The corn ripe and the rye with it.

The other main families: pines, roses, peas,
lilies, daisies, heath, birch and oak.
Maple, honeysuckle, pink, mustard, cypress, mint, olive,
      buckwheat, primrose, willow, buttercup, saxifrage,
      snapdragon, cactus.

Truth may be ascertained by considering
the truth we feel, the truth we're told,
the truth we reason, and the truth we've seen.

It is so good to be a chickadee.
To tell the truth cheerfully and joyfully.
In a way that makes others want to live.

I like his confidence, that working the problem
will certainly result in better outcomes than guessing.
A rationalist who does not depend on a higher power
to direct his decisions, but who may concede,
observe, realize and accept that he lacks the data
or the skills or tools to interpret data and these
decisions he leaves to his god.
                                    But not before
thoroughly assessing the limits of his power. Guessing
before guessing is necessary makes things worse. The skills,
tools and experience are the accumulated wisdom
of earlier experts in his field.
                                    Yet each generation
of communicants must examine the assumptions
from which the mathematics, logic, science or law
was derived. Rebuild the proofs from the simplest
truths, laws, physics. Taking God's first and only words
and extrapolating correctly, getting the trajectory
right for successful take off and re-entry.
                                    And then
to explain the derivations to your students.
Until they too can care for the species and the planet,
making whole sentences, formulas and melodies
from few words, numbers, notes.

Engineers know
to build in redundancies
when lives depend
not necessarily exact replicas of the primary unit
but systems whose secondary function
is to carry the load when a primary system
fails.
          The principle applies
to all organisms and the inanimate
objects designed to support them.
But the sun
and the rock
that is earth
need no redundancies.
Burning, cooling
one
of each, they disintegrate
without feeling
for the mantle or the planets.

Some individuals
may, it turns out, be irreplaceable.
There is not always another girl singer
this one is the only one for us
at this time, while we're alive
in this place with the random weather.
The one singer, leader
the one who interprets God's words
when she is assassinated, terminated, released
we are not released, velocity
registers a mandatory, momentarily momentous
palpitation that is gone
unlike Shakespeare
so far. She
was not the sun.
But she was found
to be irreplaceable, unique
her song.

The teacher dies having made her small contribution
to the colonization of other planets by motivating
a boy who would otherwise be a coal miner to become
a rocket engineer.
                                  Throughout the nation teachers
are sending their prize pupils through the funnel
flask to produce technology from pure science.
The mother and father are good, disciplined, god-
fearing people who stand firm against dissolution
and chaos. They hold their clod of soil in place
and others do the same to create the landscape
of community.
                            Communities across the nation
and the world produce the many to support the few
who make the tools and do the math to colonize
the planets. Once the secret of warp speed is
discovered, expansion of the species is
limitless.
                   Perhaps it is not a direct contribution
to destiny, yet some stories may be told
for centuries.
                         It takes constantly renewed
consciousness to persevere, retell the stories
and interpret lessons. You go, girl.

Their unspoken opinions
are like a *** of unknowable, unnamed meats
including skunk parts
one morsel of filet mignon

Family or workplace
longer the hours, years of the living
opinions accumulate
perception strained through mortality

This stew of ethics
holds together, blows apart
trees, planets, atoms, galaxies
on or about year 2000

One must not
express the certainty
that the child's coma-induced vision of a dead grandparent
did not actually happen in heaven

One must feign
respect for all beliefs however abjectly
death denying
because they are harmless as

ozone
zebra
xylophone
zygote

A
beautiful day follows
on Jones' Nose
ripe blueberries, black cherries

Sub-atomic particles
the atoms they form
molecules, cell organelles
cells, machinery of life
organs, organisms
communities and ecosystems
planets, solar systems, galaxies
galactic clusters and their inverse
black holes the doors to other
universes, a contradiction
in terms.
                 For language and its shadow
consciousness must hold matter
the material world snugly inside concepts
theories and hypotheses to be
experimentally verified using vision
and the other senses, collecting data
and interpreting the known facts
accumulated over time.
                                          Can matter
exist without a consciousness to behold it?

Believing in
our mortality (the species)
we have created God
(a supreme being)
probably not carbon-based
to encompass every universe
but is God
inside or outside
consciousness? Can God
tell us what to do
or must we tell God
alone
what to do?
                      Here is ego
projecting personality, exerting force
on community, asserting the existence
and predominance of component DNA.
An already hackneyed theory that DNA
survival drives
procreation, personality, savings bonds
everything but poetry (most poems included).

Mustache, cowboy hat
horse whisperer, gulag master
Odysseus, King Lear
                                      salvation in the details.
Yes, these personalities individual and interesting
as opossum, bear
oak and ash
beech nut, pine cone
Grand Canyon sandstone, Green Mountain granite.

The mind is the body
paying attention to what
it is seeing and doing.

Morning tea, unemployed
was one thing twenty years ago
and another now, two babies.

Yet when the boys pay
attention to what they do
a small rift in time opens

to name
plants and play
tunes. In that rift

the quiet morning streams
by. Work on clothing,
tools and food

gathering and preparation.
The young children practice
holding hands steady

new mind to attend.

We should have gone outside instead of watching one
of the sillier, senseless, meaningless movies it is possible
to rent or buy. Winter or not the fields and woods
are at least real, commensal and understandable if
you know the genus and species. Know the genome
and biome. Learn the physics and music.

But this much reality requires an escape, hence
bad movie. A bad book is better than a bad movie.
A good movie trumps a bad book, but a good book is best
and a great poem trumps all. Will my son Zach be one
who applies the scientific method? Can Aaron explain
God's intentions to the people? Their mother and I will wait.

Night drive home
no cars behind or ahead
the day had been satisfying
victories, compromises, achievements

half hour to home
bubble of warm air and light
moving toward it in my metal bubble
toward my wife and children

watch for patches of ice
casually, not nervously
maintaining velocity and analyzing
Jim Hall's and Paul Desmond's Bewitched

which way should I go
back west past industrialized cities
to spruce-fir forests
then what? the same

need for man-made implements,
refreshments, even names
they gave the rocks and trees.
Not one thing or thought uniquely mine.

Whether I am a visitor to my life
or the actual owner, inside
the bubble of air, water, blood
that must not now slide off the road

into time.

News photo of the Rwandan dead
bobbing naked at the base
of waterfall. Wide hips and narrow
shoulders, surely a young woman once
sexually active. No solution
to death's finality.

Is the production and distribution
of food and other essential services
fragile or deeply embedded.
Can or cannot the economy
support the growing or diminishing population.
The Road Warrior, however shallow,
attracts for its vision of social breakdown
and the sources of regeneration. Of course
Jane Jacobs is more complex and compelling.

The Rwandan dead
had dalliances and alliances.
It is the indignity of their exposure
and the rapid decay of their former lives,
mere mulch, fertilizer
for wild vegetation.
Molecular bonds loosening
and joining new forms.

How do the vast darkness
extending to the ends of the expanding
universe and the temporal light of human
consciousness interact
to make the world?

The Grand Canyon is like the brain
with deep, unexplored fissures and tributaries,
the main route well known by now.

I am walking, walking inside my mind,
a grand canyon, a planet of canyons, a system
of planets. The exploration may become dangerous

I might lose my job, forgetting to go or losing
sight of its importance. But the job is gathering
pinyon nuts and saguaro fruits, it is the main

river, deepest cavity, how I find the unexplored
canyons and tributaries of my neighbors
and my enemies. But is it a religion,

a reason for living. It is a marriage, for better
or worse, with all the other living. The concept
of life's brevity, temporary compared

with the time taken to carve the canyon, does
not interest me. Each moment has a weather,
is a mirror of all other moments. The naming

of things goes on. Cliff rose and wavyleaf oak,
new mexican locust and sagebrush among ponderosa
and pinyon pine, juniper. Once I know

who they are inhabiting the canyon, the raven's
flight is meaningful. The raven's rock cave,
search for seed and carrion, my home and job.

Blackbrush -- Coleogyne ramosissima
the dominant understory shrub
in the pinyon-juniper canyons.

Mountain-mahogany -- Cercocarpus montanus and ledifolia.
Single-leaf ash -- Fraxinus anomalus
and possibly a western hophornbeam

by the small birch-like leaves
and the shredding bark
in a moist stretch of joint trail.

The joint-fir, green ephedra
looks like an ocean plant.
Could the wind or white water rivers alone

have shaped these sandstone, red rock forms?
Network of canyons, inverse of mountains.
It had to be ocean

ebbing and flowing, emotionally, like wind,
moving atmosphere, thicker
shaving, scraping, polishing, gouging, digging

fish canyons
then, shallower, dinosaur swamps
now, dry, rock gardens.

Explain the human history with water:
did the Anasazi visit neighbors
along the canyon rims and deep within,

combination caves and red-rock houses
small windows, doorways, just crawlways,
with corn gifts on summer evenings

when the canyon bottoms held permanent, not intermittent,
streams? After them
came the Ute and Navajo, Spanish and English.

Ravens dine on road ****.
A few long red roads connect some canyons.
The unprotected flats are overgrazed, rabbitbrush.

It is interesting
that as I learn the woody and herbaceous plants,
walk the desert foothills, I too could stay.

The only problem with 'Moonstruck'
is Cosmo's moon could never be so large in winter,
stand for luck.

Mid-winter sledding brought joy
snow, speed, although the kids were beautiful
none were boys.

Walking the boundaries, and the old field
boundaries. Aged maples, barbed wire
past the cambium.

Northern hardwood all the way, except
less than an acre scotch pine plantation
and a few primeval spruce.

Pendant spruce cones in tree tops
colonizing the old field too. Conifers
a primitive civilization.

Lyonia has red, scaleless buds.
Shrub or small tree, maximum height 12 feet.
It's a heath, Ericaceae.

Small, white, bell-like flowers become
seamed capsules, similar to but smaller than
laurel, Kalmia.

The buds had me thinking red chokeberry,
Rosaceae, but of course the fruit
was completely wrong for a rose.

A timber stand improvement now
in the scotch pine would encourage tall
even straight trees, a cathedral.

The maples on the upper rocky slopes
where the skidders couldn't or wouldn't go
are impressive as eagles', hawks' nests.

Mid-summer, Spiraea, field of pink flowers
fully encircled by mountain ranges.
Bees working them.

Nancy, the broker, coming at five.
These 160 acres, a dream, are unnecessary.
Offer 500 dollars per acre.

Not an investment, a sanctuary.
Backed against the Taconic ridge,
real moon rising.

Pokeweed waits
underground, snow crusts
small greenish white flowers, leaves entire
and alternate, black berries
poisonous, ripe late.

Waits patiently past February
when the sun stays up in the sky more than January
and six more months after that
past the peepers keeping watch
for every passing dog or truck.

We await our time
or have had it, or are having it.
Body in slow, not precipitous, decline.
Expend ourselves on work and wine.
Percent of budget expended, year to date.

I heard a redwing this morning
who might have been choosing a nest site
holding the spot against chevrons from the south.
Choosing the best site, away from predators, near water,
in sight of seed and buds.

It happens that when the pokeweed fruit pokes out
the chicks were born, the fledglings flown
leaves already leathery
and the weather has the faintest
hint of January's cold snow hold.

It has been beautiful, late August, full moon
a million crickets following
a million fireflies in June,
a million May peepers. Immersed
in insect, amphibian cycles, I am a mammal, drugged,
crossing the road, car approaching
fast, unnoticed.

I would choose to die in late summer.
Why?
So that my wife would have autumn, intense,
to grieve by,
snowy bandages with which to bind the wound,
and spring to reawaken into.
Summer to remember that she's loved.

Silence of winter
distant from all but my ****** contacts
her bedroom nights
and day friends
memory of my independence vanishing dream
holding on to it, myself
knowing how love can hurt.

Its seduction of me, dissolving my man barriers
biologically, to procreate
or create a new personality, a deepening
humility, her womanhood hands.
Not giving in completely
touching sweetly
but staying strong.

Going into the winter to mark my trees
not flinching in the dark early morning
casting an eye cold as a telescope
moving inexorably
a part of nature, insect, star.
This is how I'll love
and live with her.

The white-breasted nuthatch
upside down the ancient bole.
If it has no soul, neither do I.

Pencils criss-crossed on the desk,
sticks tangled on the ground.
Oblong lenticels, yellow stars.

We try to worship the divine
in our ****** partners. They **** and sweat diurnally
and fear their deaths. But the abstract

God has also died. He lied to say he was
eternal. Earth must burn, universe grow cold.
Old field species become ornamentals.

Mosquitoes prey on us, and black flies.
The body decays, and this is what you come
to love. And the ants that carry it away.

This morning, the profusion of species
contents me. The temperate zone is warm, late May.
The posture of that bird is good to emulate.

In Cities in Flight
transformations are chronicled over generations.
It can make us cry
out for the genius occurring
now and in our past. How
the unseen, unknown participant
was made known to himself
through devotion to those outside himself. He
guides his city
into space.

So, the father and the teacher
guide the family and the student
through the close spaces of knowledge
and obligation. And perform
the history that surrounds them.
Good actors and directors,
philosophers and physicists,
soldiers and foresters.

Today
steam rose from the asphalt
because the sun
has arrived in place, powerful, equinoxal
as the human song
that receives it.

Two big deer
       Lope cautiously
             Off the open road.

Two crows
       Fly low
             Above the Oswegatchie.

Frank Bassett
forester since '57
marks a stand of maple and black cherry
for selective cutting. His actions today
will be noted
by another forester, also acting alone,
in the 21st century.

New York City
in a froth of creativity
Pacino and Sheen in Julius Caesar,
Sonny Rollins at Town Hall,
films opening, one
that portrays the flamboyant style
and dedication
of a barrio public school teacher.

You cannot act alone.
You must belong
in your heart
to the flight humanity makes in Spring, north
toward wild flowers
in geese chevrons.

One leaf falls
holographic illusion
across time the Terminator travels
to shape Sarah Connors' destiny.
Heart attack
a common enough destiny
as common as young men discussing girls' ****.
The Constitution
is the document we refer to, the lodestone
to correct course and not go crazily astray.
Lose all purpose beyond ******, child *** and food hording.
Illuminated manuscripts
in a dark age, tape decks remind us of our voice
our communal voice
Supremes and Fred Astaire
the silken wail.

I lie alone in the night
its sensuality makes the best sense
it does or does not clarify the day
of classes or clients or chain saws
whatever fever may have infected me at the moment
a fever to achieve access to foreign films while living in the
      mountain community of Schroon Lake
the fever to instruct the American people how to apply ideals
      and practicalities of Constitution to international
      relationships
the fever not to die today, to maintain consciousness just one
      more season (and one more after that).

Anyway, what is being discussed -
the finiteness of one life -
or perhaps existence continues in another dimension, on
      another frequency
no owl hoots
but other purpler and indigo occurrences
with other purposes
as incomprehensible and wonderful as these purposes
to choke on a cherry pit or nuclear bomb
to wail our wail together
each individual identifiable hoot and wail, loud laugh and
      suppressed scream
one orbicular chant, humanity, from India to Indiana
complete, one sing.

I feel this way
searching for my place among you
childless, but a child among children
obeying or not obeying the speed limit
as my hormones permit
everywhere among brothers, the sisters among sisters
the races together exterminating the last rhinoceros and
      preserving its genes at the zoological society
my species attacking entire rain forests, temperate forests
      and boreal forests
like the engraver beetle in the red pine's inner bark.
Thus, I occasionally cheer the Terminator
cheer the machine and neutron bomb
even in the face of individual heroics, the male and female face
their physical love, tender and violent
I don't know what I want.

It could be simple
as this headache.
Not to despair
just to care enough to think clearly and accept 10,000 years
      of history.
Not to hate those in authority
humor is the only remedy
yellow ape teeth chimping in the glass death face
and ritual is remedy
a death song
and one for planting
and one for the beginning of loving.

Aspen, ponderosa pine, blue spruce
pink glacier-cut rock, scree, ravens
gray jay, peregrine falcon, hawk.

We climb to 11,000 feet in three days,
camp at Lawn Lake for three days. Alpine
tundra. Elk, bighorn sheep, marmot.

Tileston Meadows, ticks in grass,
rock face of Mummy Mountain.
Binoculars show pink cracks in gray rock.

Stoke gas stoves, play cards.
Boil water, set up tarps, lay out
sleeping bags, hang bear bag.

Watch crescent moon slice into
Fairchild Mountain. Moonlight
makes a mosque of the rocks.

Yellow aspen splash in dark green
spruce and pine. Gullies where streams
slash during spring snowmelt.

One rock, feather or flower worth
more than money. Need no wallet,
keys. Just clothes for fur.

All day climb toward saddle to see
what's on other side. One hawk floating
among bare peaks and over valleys.

Wind at 13,000 feet
turns to sleet. Turn back from peak,
take boulders two at a time down.

Winter moves into mountains.
Then we fly from Denver to New York
where it's still summer.

An old man remembers what he has been
yet the details are unimportant. Then
the outline disappears, and the meaning.

Good, I can die or go to work, be wise
or a ****. Rich or poor, the wind and rain
wear us away and it's o.k.

Ask what matters, that
question. Feeling the seasons, wearing a hat,
loving your woman, a good ****.

Children born. Two cells meet, multiply,
spiral into fetus. The mother is amazed:
an intelligence apart from herself.

The violent rainstorm kept me awake
although the lightning was still far away.
I lay in my bed and listened naked.

In the holy spot
with the sitting rock
there is oak. Out
where humans live
there is shagbark hickory
and maple.

Ants climb the rock.
August, and young birds
are quiet when the parents
celebrate the flowering
weeds. Next come
the seeds of autumn.

I am here to name it
and know it and help it
to grow. True, these mountains
are my grave. A good grave
to go to.

The crows have been
in conference, again.
A jay, blue, pokes
a hole through reality.
There I find the sumacs
fruiting and the male *** organs
of the Queen Anne's lace.

Company of flies, so
intelligent. Two abandoned
farmer's fields are wide as
Alaska. Is there one
who could name
every flower here?

The Aberdeen bus arrives, deposits and boards
the same people daily. One is the dark-haired
chambermaid at the tourist lodge, awkward
in her print dress and wearing a frown. Her
******* inspire while her legs are
quintessence. The sun dispels moisture

and with fire-blackened face I buy a popsicle
after work and achieve a counterfactual
childhood. This is what the chambermaid’s scowl
is about, the frozen treat and smile of a grown man.
On a summer night what passions
would I find in her? We take our place in the pattern

of daily activity, pick-up trucks with crews
arriving and leaving, uniformed rangers narrow
in their imaginations. Two ravens fly low
over the clearcut like weather, in weather, there will
be weather. Felling trees in the forest, I look uphill.
The ravens float like hawks, nearly immobile.

Today is Sunday and I'm going to the ocean
or maybe not. Definitely not doing the laundry
or maybe I will. Moss and even a small tree
grow in the rotten stubs of the pier pilings.
The city is Seattle and it has a macho airport.

Give me the comfort of a moose knowing its
water supply. The mosquito's acceptance of its position
among a million mosquitoes. The pool of stagnant
water that remains one with the mothering ocean.
I drift on the air, less than a seed, a bacteria.

Or I am human, big ****, big brain containing
universal philosophic affidavit. Pleased by
the churning of my tongue, ****** enlightenment,
devout prayer, gourmet dining. I swear
it is best to be alive and to have loved Mary.

Even in the last days you need clean clothes;
therefore you may be found in the laundry
mornings, small task against the larger one
of not breathing. With simple joy
men may forget to fear their deaths.
Six inches of snow reminds us of its dominance
in a pleasant way. Coming and going of sleep,
circling of the moon around the earth, earth
around the sun. The great man dies
and this makes death more noble for us all.
It is with joy that I accept the pains
that herald my end. I do my job well.
I go to the well and break the ice for water.
The bucket comes up full of dying wonder.

In "The Shootist", J.B. Books is not feeling up to *****.
He has cancer. What are the concerns
of a man dying.

To die
commensurate with the way he lived his life.
Books dies in a gunfight.
McIntosh dies in the desert, under a broken wagon,
fighting Indians.
Norman Thayer will die of heart failure
by the side of his wife, Ethel.

Two police officers
die investigating a stolen moped at a gas station
in the Bronx.
One buys it between the eyes, the other in the back.
The killer out on early parole
from a manslaughter rap.
The DA blames the judge, the judge blames the parole board,
and the board says the jails are overcrowded.

What should I be doing, old turtle.
Devote myself to re-order the world
or crawl off to a lonely spot and preserve myself.
We are trying
to educate everyone to their individual capacities
and see that all are fed, clothed and sheltered adequately.
Because the suffering of one citizen makes suffering
for another, the slow death of one sometimes makes
the sudden ****** of another.

There is this
black rock we live on and its lovely mantle of green.
It is all that is perfect. And everything of it is
perfect that respects its integrity. On the subway
I was amused to find, hidden in the confused
mass of anonymous, bleak graffiti, unseen
by the studied, expressionless passengers,
in pink, delicate script, vertically written,
the word *****.

People are the element I live in.
The world is pushy, we are bone,
the numbers of us overwhelm.
It is going to be hot again soon
and the Bronx will actively resent it.

Books dies in Carson City,
only two or three people will miss him at all.
He died alone as he lived,
with his enemies.

Is it stress,
or loss, despair and survival
we must discuss.
                                    Stress is just the symptom
of a universe intent to destroy the individual
before it births new life. It sends the dogs
after us, after the holocaust, in the tattered ruins
of our city.
                        There is this despair and expectation
of destruction, but somewhere there is still also
simple sky blue,
flowers among railroad ties,
true love between ****** partners.

Is it ***,
or love, companionship and reliableness
we must expect.
                                   ***, nothing but laying my head
at your ****, can interest me sometimes. Your legs
lead to a pleasure that seems infinite and smells
perfect.
                  So there is this tenderness, a connection
like a suction to the biological that is ephemeral
as snow on the ground,
one elk in aspen,
death and nothing less.

Let us accept this pain
and some fear
it will heighten autumn colors
crack of clean air
black crows in blue sky
lake.

Rather than fight pain, falling
asleep in front of tv,
understand the full
import of its situation
in the body. Blessed
once, cursed now
only fear prevents
full knowledge of experience.

The gray sky brings
winter, no blame.
The poet writes a few last poems
or continues to live with his pain.
In itself pain does not oppose
life, and may enhance it
or build character, create
wisdom. But too much fear
chokes the throat and burns
the eyes. It
destroys the last free
assessment of life.

       --------------------------------------

Now I am going to live in my body
as it is, almost fearlessly
running in pain, working
to abandon immortality
as a hope, conceiving
sunset after sunset
feeling what I feel.

On the streets I meet
many beautiful young women
curious to a certain extent
what makes a man older.
I can only say ten years
and the hand that reaches through
the cloud. I can say
only the knowledge of mortality
which makes us brothers and sisters
with the animals. And only
the acceptance which gives us wisdom
to couple often and lovingly.

How am I going to live every day
as my last, hoping happiness
outgrows fear by an ounce
or enough? By running, writing
and loving. By moving uphill
and downhill like a bear.
By committing my last words
to a powerful lord. How
do the clouds accept my dead
self? A rock thrown, a crow.

       --------------------------------------

When I am old
young girls will not be frightened anymore.
I will invite them
to my seat and tell
about the women I knew.
I will tell about
the clothes they wore
and how they earned a living.
I will try to remember
what was important to them
and if they had a favorite color
or knew how to divine.

Maybe I live and maybe I don't.
The smoke is white or black.
The winds are bright or dark.
The coins are heads or tails.
What have I been afraid of?
Death is most of all like sleep.
We spend so long apart
after briefly knowing ourselves.
I need you to know myself
and without you all I know
is sun.

The clouds take a little blue from the sky
beyond, how beautiful the weather makes life
seem. The sky is where the soul goes when
the mind runs out of destinations. We love
the mountains because that's where the earth
meets the sky. If you just watch the sky
an hour each day, lie back in the grass,
you'll never be ill. When it rains your face
becomes a holy bowl. Once I was a beggar, no
cares, by railroad tracks. They too disappeared
into the sky. A small town you could hold in your fist
on the prairie. A big city easy to hold in your mind
when you're in the sky. The clouds take a little blue
from the sky. The sky takes a little blue from your soul. . .

No words, oily body sweats, city summer.
Desperate to get out and never return although
stalled on Triborough Bridge I admired the skyline.

My city, my death, I did it my way.
Counting your blessings a healthy activity,
the park out my back window, a job that pays.

But I am losing strength to fight
for the world in my imagination. Acceptance of reality
makes me a fossil of society.

Basho in old age found strength to walk
deep into the mountains. He visited famous sites
up north. Po Chu-i traveled mountains in his dreams.

You can leave at any time. You can return
without being seen. A way to learn
your insignificance, freedom to have never been.

Crows, bluejays and pigeons
talk this morning. Closest we come
to wilderness here. Autos screech
and sirens scream. Only 7 a.m.
My fat belly and possible cancer
worry me. With a few months
to live, I'd search the wilderness
for some wisdom I missed. Or
plain beauty of natural randomness.
Knowing that, why do I remain
in health? I must devote my
present to my future existence.

The bluejays complain long after
everyone else is silent.
Love and friendship need the body
and society. You belong, you want
to belong, three days in wilderness
and you gladly return to
lovers' arms and plumbing.
But one day you die. And this
is the ideal independence you sought.
This death is the pristine aloneness,
the untouched wilderness and
freedom from necessity! And
it is certain. You do not save
for it. You do not worry that
you may miss your opportunity.

No cows to look at
I hear the truck traffic

Everything changes like clouds
The page this poem is on burns

Coming from the funeral with friends
Talking on the telephone

No trucks to grind their gears
I hear the minute hand moving

Birds and people inhabit the earth
A black bear inhabits the earth, too

A rock in the sun
Calligraphy brush

In a mind there is apocalypse
No one can hear it

What is appropriate to say about the changes
in your life. That at 23 I was confused
about a girl, under the sculpted pines.

Quietly, my friends and I contemplate death.
A subject, until recently, unknown
to us in such a variety of forms. Nuclear flash
to exploding blood vessel in the brain, control
eludes us. Heirs to a society adept with numbers,
we run in the park and eat whole grains,
increasing survival odds.

The city and the mountain are two hard anvils
against which our hot lives are shaped. Love
is the fire, and the need for love. To be shaped
by the lover's warm hands, like clay.
Alive, almost sure of it.

Have I ever been profoundly lost? Yes. Railroad tracks and a river wide as the Amazon, yet lost. Living in the intense sunshine of northern New York summer, but lost in the shade of a gazebo. And here? Here I am enclosed in a tomb of porcelain machinery. With another winter passing its calling card in at the window. The warm steam no longer cutting the rough edge. Wearing wool sweater nights. The freedom of summer gone and only one ****. What a nightmare, what a strange dream, life on planet, winter all around.

            A system, they call it a system. I call it an evolved anarchy. Repetition, never. What do I know. Repetition, every two thousand years. Coming of a frost, coming of a fire. When nature proves furious beyond remembrance. Polar bear mugs wino.

                               --------------------------------------

                         ­               *******

                            Tall, attractive, talented WM, 31,
                            trumpet player, takes pleasure in
                            performing ******* with clean
                            attractive women. Age, race, marital
                            status no object. All replies answered.

            Here is where it started, amusing myself in an undisciplined manner in the playpen. Being rude when interrupted. Height of bad taste hitting the wall, what's he talking about. Marlowe went to bed. He had a headache. Used an empty bottle for a teddy bear/sap. In the middle of the night, three secret men approached the rock he slept under. They did not see him there, the fire had long ago gone out. But they'd seen it across the valley, and tried to estimate. They were close.

            What do I care. They did this, he did that, they did this and this and that. He used his feet, took off his shoes. It mauled him to death in two minutes of the first round. Would have been better for him if it happened faster. Never got his knife out of his pocket. But he lived, with one eye after that.

                               --------------------------------------

                   What do you do with a drunken sailor early
                               in the morning?
                   You pull that sailor out of bed by his hairy
                               moorings.

            Why should anybody believe this, this tiresome outpouring of old moans and groans, grumbles about loneliness of life and dominance of telephone. This gamble on print, above the spoken, sung word. The meditative call to inhabitants of planet to kneel woefully and pray. No, to chant as if the planet were mending.

            Mending rhymes with ending, why not. And television, radio appreciated. Drugs and *****, jagged bent faces, black wet rock. The mantle of moss ripped away. Period. Amen to men. Absolute magical ripcord.

Sunset, quiet, except
for happy birthday to neighbor's child,
virgo, and all that means, purity
of morality, inability to scheme,
whatever else the stars dictated.

Woodpecker climbs oak, Connecticut.
Not ten years ago this mountain was
completely forested, untouched
since early arrival of Europeans.
Now my parents' home and others stand
in new clearings. The birds
do not seem to mind. Sing,
and deer occasionally visit, from where?
Out of the pre-historic past.

That I must die
is my every third thought.
On my hands and knees, cold sweat,
my own body murdering me.
I meet death with the philosophy
I lived in life. Acceptance
of the loneliness, the unregarding
beauty. There is that shoreline
along the straits to Puget Sound,
in mist, the generations
of sea birds nesting on the water.

1

Last night dinner
with four couples
points out the difficulties in living together
and apart.
                    Even the
son of a wealthy doctor, disdainful of
inebriates more artificial than the moon,
full, full of joy for humanity
and life
                 suffers deepening depressions
like the dark outside a lamplight.

It was a good restaurant
expensive but comfortable
in the alternate life-style way
the cook was a hairy
talented clown
and we clowned though beneath each
facade
was turmoil and decay.
                                           We lay
beside each other like bones
in a boneyard
and find joy (I do anyway)
in the bone dance
to bone music.
                                
2

Without a thought for slash fuel
or deer, the mist
deepens and deteriorates upon
the mountain. The mountain
completely unaware
of its greenness. The ice
is centuries old.

A red-tailed hawk
floats above the unit
observes what small mammals, birds
are in the clearcut

Awaits
the moment
to strike

or fades away almost
silent as the mist. I dream
of it, though I am awake
among my co-workers, the bullet
system zinging cut logs down
to the road, firewood.

3

Pardon
me you mountains
for coming to the edge
without mystical knowledge
or belief, only love and wrinkled
eyes for the women and men who
light the fires and wield the chain saws,
drive the cat, swing the ax, I

completely laugh among them like a god
yes, although my face is a mask of hate
and pain, what god does not come to this field
of flowers out of fear and confusion and chains
product of the hot anvil and hot engine
of human history.
                                                
This duality, these arm-breaking dualities
this volcanic eruption erupting from some
confluence of beheaded forces, one
powerful with eternity, one
blinding with intensity, meet
and in the middle is me

like a husband and wife fighting
like two dogs fighting but not biting hard
life bests my best synthesis of it
and I begin to pray, hard to believe
I kneel woefully and pray
for a happy combination
of sun and mist
and sometimes man’s destruction.

Monk's shaved pate
thick pelt around edge
leans over book

                              leans over book above river
reciting lines, reading scriptures, preparing
first for his personal salvation, then
for those of other men.

                                                 He prays, sweetly
                                                 serenely, steadfastly
                                                 participating

in the broad rhythmic thrusting of the river
and the earth.

                        Completely exposed
                 to its vibration
         he vibrates passively
yet passionately

putting effort into remembering some
        of the ancient, past taboos
                and practices
                        Performing

the art of total presence
and abstinence.

                             Absent from worldly
                                         life, abstaining wholly
                                                     from touching
                                                        ­         the black girl

                                                     becoming
                                         part of her beads
                             her sweaty underwear

commanding a full dress view
            of her stimulus,
                        her honey.

How far from nature and life it is
the gray clouds, airplanes in them
the night cooing and pigeons roosting
Sirma's garden gone to roses and seed

                        That airplane overhead!
                        pointing the way
                        pointing to war

War being an aggravated condition of what
we already know

                        Flowering beneath the noise
                        of yet another jet passing overhead.

                         --------------------------------------

Why this much sadness in a world so beautiful?
We are sad for the weariness of everything, including earth
(that will go on tropically flowering long after we are gone)
we

            who are nothing
            in powerful time's
            grip

history, passionate history, coffee between
neighbors.

                         --------------------------------------

            Enter into alliance
            With the sweet darkness, night!

            Night and day, day and night
            Everybody knows when the moon is bright.

            We dance by the light of the moon
            All night.

                         --------------------------------------

We dance by the light of the moon.
We dance by the light of the moon and setting sun.

                                            We drive
                  we crow and call
three pigeons!
                  and make the world alive
                                            even bricks.

                                            Jets
two pigeons!
                  Milk-skinned doves
                                            enmesh

Two gray-skinned sharks, jets,
embrace in the sky, a blue green oil truck takes
the hill, cobblestoned, in low
steady gear.

                         --------------------------------------

Zazen position
      to remain so
            unmoved
                  yet moved
                        by the stillness

the movement of the car uphill
      part of your system of beliefs
            unmoved by it, parked
                  necking in the front seat
                        hawks diving for pigeons' eggs

and so you are compelled to move
      by the force that created you. but
            you impose your own small order
                  departing from traditions
                        human history understands

                  a mutant

such as those currently developing
the human mind beyond its past capacities.

                         --------------------------------------

                  Two straw sandals
                        blue jay call
                              two sea gulls

                         --------------------------------------

The jets return
      flying low.
            Laying low

and breathing low
      mists
            of pure noise.

Tired body aches. Long walk on starry night -
ears attuned for bear at creek, or cougar.
Nothing, not a doe.
                                    But that afternoon
came upon a healthy young buck in a meadow.
High up. And a hawk left a feather for me.
Old, old stands of lodgepole pine, grey bark
like wrinkled hides of elephants. Thick carpet
of dead needles.
                              Thirst. Sit at snowbank
for an hour eating snow. Burn tongue.
To soon after stumble upon a pond and the place
that a creek springs from the mountain. Water
indescribable. Eat ravenously and drink deep
gulps.

Climb highest rocky peak at dusk. Razor-back
ridge. Mother hawk scream nearby. Must
backtrack and then go straight down near dark
feet fall through layers of scrub pine, hands
grab for the live stalks only support against
broken bone.
                          Choose steep narrow bed of loose rocks,
surely waterfall in some other season and descend
on *** and all fours, feet first always fearful
it will end in an uncontrollable hundred foot drop.
Trickles of water nearing bottom.
                                                         ­  Cracked hands, raw
behind, cross final snowbank and attain road
along Snake Creek.

another day in the woods. on Strawberry ridge
looking out over undulating green hills to
the next great wall ridge of mountains. the last
morning clouds left from last night's storm
hanging in the valley mistily. the sun eventually
burns them away.

the respect between old Paul Karlsen and I continues
to exist. even though he's a Mormon and I'm a fallen
New Yorker. the work is comparatively easy, lifting
hundred pound bags, so you can just imagine what
we do other days. in fact, it's fun, especially for
young Bates. we get all white (and our lungs dusty).

on the way to and from the work site I read
in Silent Spring, the chapter against herbicides, gathering
inspiration for the upcoming controversy. in the end
perhaps I'll be fired for refusing to lay down Tordon
beads. realizing this, as I drive with Bates,
I see the dark green conifers and begin to miss them.

                                         Rocks and rattlesnakes, bluebells
and mountain daisies, grasses and cactuses, mahogany
bush, lodgepole pine and quaking aspen, lush forest
and dry sun-tortured mountainside, wind and seed
carried by wind, ants, streams, hummingbird
and hawk, deer, badger, ground squirrel, wolverine.

There is absolutely nothing to do. Some people
fall in love. I go have a cheese sandwich
with mustard. Watch skyscraper lights from
the bed. Look at the books and decide to read
none of the dry words. The cheese sandwich is
good, and orange juice. It's cold in the kitchen
so I go back to bed even though it's Spring.

Some people go dancing in fish net stockings.
They find a good time - but exactly what this means -
it's not more important than a star. Quite
what is this waiting. Tonight I could disappear
and the world might not miss me until next year.
I remember passionate nights with some of the women
I've known. Two sides of a smooth stone.

The one power that a man can have is in
the perfection of himself. He changes
with the weather but of this he's unaware.

A churlish man and his teacher are walking
along a road when he is suddenly instructed
to look down a side street. Spring trees in leaf.

I go in front of the mirror and observe
the changes to come in my face. I turn
my chair so I can see out all the windows.

What is right fits the time perfectly. It
is all out of my hands. In this the peace
is supreme. Yet my hands embrace the ***.

In the morning the air is cold and clear
at the river. Then clouds and the confusion
in people. At dusk the sky is clear again.

Rather than put myself in the sky which is so
complete with blue and clouds, I make a space
in a line of people climbing a trail in the mountains.

All night I work on my thinking and waiting
until at dawn I see the iron clouds shift sunlight
and listen to the years changing my life with a laugh.

I say thank you to all the influences that a plant
like me goes on growing fearless as a daisy.
I need no robes, I wear baggy underpants in the morning.

By afternoon I am transformed by the light from my beard.
Some girls think I'm cute. At first I'm shy but soon
I take my wooden chair among a bench of kids from
      Lowell.

At night I fall in love with the first person to stop
his car. Because I am a well of love for my lady.
The drone of stars slowly changing places in the sky.

When I fall asleep by the river it is like I'm dead.
There it is. I use my coat for a pillow and lay my head
at the root of a tree. Shade my eyes from the sun, white
      waits.

Five days of steady rain. A hurricane approaches the city. The streets are flooding but the wildlife is thriving. Every person wears a raincoat or carries an umbrella. Indoors is cozy. Movie theaters are crowded in the early afternoon. We who live alone are more isolated; those who live together are more aggravated. The heavens are having a fine time belting it out.

            A fly is swept from a windowpane in early August but men's machines are almost oblivious to the storm. Except the wires in Mr. Glyckman's Volvo are wet. People's dreams begin to take place in the water. When they awake their thoughts are floating in the puddle of night.

            Raindrops slap the leaves and splash the ground. Travel is not advised, wherever you are it seems like home. Next month dirt on the shingles of the house will remind the painter of the great rain. Even the rain no longer makes an impression on the earth, only a ripple in the rain. If there are mountains or the sea they seem more like brother and sister than father and mother these days. Summer feels like winter.

            Children are less visible and mothers are women who were once girls. Nightclubs are full and the listeners listen more seriously. Music continues but the rain muse has her say. Lovers are less joyous and more happy. The full moon's influence is muted by clouds, the blood between people is thicker. The Himalayas come to the Rockies and the Rockies reach for the Alps. The imagination comes to the market.

            The roads leading down to the river are empty and wet and the bright painted houses along them are quiet. A dog and a cat under a porch patient and unperturbed. A love-gnarled man with a brown beard and walking stick walks in the middle of the street. If a curtain moves, a woman wonders how many days he's been out in the rain like a child. But only the water winding back to the sea, a mad naked saint at the Last Judgement, welcomes him home.

As if the sun intended this habitual tendency to make the body healthy I do. First, the brain believes itself what a mistake if it's blue. The eyes blue breeze sky praise God some beautiful living world earth. Good as a proper prayer could good. Then a leg moves. What a miracle course of muscle goes to greatness human and divine. Morning moving as good a feeling.

            An arrow of cloud on the sky points the way. Everyday look you and you find an ancient new way. A list of the components contains the river's horizontal reserve deep dull and dark as a dream, the blue sky and her daughter the gentle breeze and her great husband the morning sun. After these, men and their nice machines and their morning chores.

            When I get up I brush my teeth mundane. I put fruit in a bowl by the bed and brew tea. I feed the cats animal meats preserved and cans of caught fish organs and oils complex. Their ***** being different from mine cleaning. I sweep the floors with a broom and a dust. And knock in the nails. I check the mailbox and search the street a fence a neck a stretch for the mailman and imagine the mail. My doing this opens the windows and unlocks the doors.

            Next I water thirty thirsty plants important. The ferns smell of earth spray. This good thing lasts into the wee hours of your life remember. Open goodness goes to heaven sky on earth or in a sense four seasons. I open the back door porch and a black cat morning. You wonder why. A childhood breeze makes the feelings in the mind play music. The mystery of night is now a mystery of morning. Something of nostalgia wine.

            The center the stomach the body the ***. It propels the people's body all day. From morning to night a woman a man. Everything fitting and grand and in through the door healthy, nothing and wise. The grass on the hill of a willing riverbank. Welcome and good morning.

While waiting but not watching for the sun to set, perhaps the bullfrogs are creating the shadows with their croaks, my friend screams out because he has been bitten by a fly. He is not quiet enough so the flies obtain special pleasure from teasing him. Meanwhile bluebirds skirt the lake surface like the most perfectly designed fighter planes in twos or threes and argue rising up on their tails into the air. While insects prey upon and tease the bare flesh and blood of we humans, they fear the silent violence, the sudden huge presences of these family birds.

            A larva with a leaf tip for a cocoon descends a white birch by a long thread. We free ourselves from our writings to observe phenomenon. Then thinking about dinner. The flight of J. Krishnamurti, the eagle guru says even artists (after physicists and mathematicians) may penetrate the unknown if not too absorbed in their own emotions and imaginations. We common people too who loving our wives can love everyone.

            What eyesight the bluebirds have to swoop the lake from shore for a flying insect or descend from fifty feet on a thin straw grass and return to chew absent-mindedly! Just fun having song sung among men. As for the syntax, a daisy could swing it unthinking and coast. Along the beehive rocks ants crawl on connecting interlacing instructions. All around us and inside too as if stars were unseen but present it's true. So a man desires breakfast with his lady; could it be more amusing, material or smell?

            As the eyesun descends below spun clouds, spirit or the eagle or the drum? Round. The dialectic obscure couldn't be more better said. So round and serious. To love everyone with clearer vision than a bluebird or a lake is to transcend the innocence of insect and take flight action and feed the babies of fate. Phew! Dinner outside the cocoon. I brought myself a student upon the hill or mountain and said to myself I said Obo rebop in summer sweater and what less overweight can carry test uphill so slow? Presently, reformed, informed by the bluebird's eagle spirit, clear cleanhead, I return coagulating mightily ideas the bites of insects ow! to breakfast home and everywhere unknown. Hearing bird with clear conscience echo make.

I begin the day buying yogurt in a small
favorite grocery store. The clerk
a man of few pretenses was making jokes
about his wife, how they fight in bed.
Discovering the better stores in the community.
In a given day, isolated from friends,
I speak to few people. An old woman
asks me for directions to the post office
or I speak to a stranger over the phone about night work.

At home my every thought comes to the counterpoint of
      a dream:
a girl I love surprises me by knocking on the window.
I ply my arts all day alone.
After this silence like being hidden away in the woods
in a cabin, bored
but owing no member of society an explanation,
invitation to a party. A flow of wine and devilish drugs
and quickly I am making a fool of myself.

My new friends like me
but when they think about me at all,
they wonder.
                        Wandering home
through the midnight air, alone again,
free, admiring
the ghostly houses of my new neighbors
by new moonlight.