Not like a figwort but not an aster, either. Could he be a buttercup
with sepals, no petals, but sepals like petals? Alan is a bluebeech,
an ash if his books sell. Quick shake hands. Zach's bald ok, a
magnolia, cone-like fruits a bridge to his Neanderthal father.
When did Ben become a chestnut lover? It's said women are practical
but there's much variation in their leaves, ovaries. Many are older,
stumps, snags for peckers and porcupines, teachers, feeders, seeders.
What did the wood thrush sing
                                                      teachi­ng its young thrush meanings?

Sometimes a mushroom. Did you know such fungi are mostly protein?
Mushrooms could replace meat, and the dead, the dead's feet, white
as pyrola, could replace the living. Well, we worry. Will we, bad luck,
be extinguished. Denizens of convenience stores think who cares, will
I beat the reaper? Hope sempiternally springs. Things rarely clear
as sun among the sundews. Eating huckleberries from your kayak.
What Paulinaq says is live your life and then your death until nothing's
      left.
Then thou shalt be bereft
                                            of the heavy sackcloth of the soil, soul.

Said to Mrs. Buckthorn: good poets imitate, great poets steal.
I think she's more an apple tree. Or pear. Good to eat,
amenable to loving. Rose or Ericaceae, the differences make the
difference. Emerson and Rylin Malone are dead. The dead
are dumb, the dust won't speak. And this deep, dull and dark
blessing's a horizontal reserve. Moonlit. Mr. Hickory is actually a
      yellow birch,
holy and exfoliating. Busy spilling seed on the surface of the snow.
Teaching essay
                       writing, algebra, earth science, branches of government.

I would be a cypress, cedar, branches calligraphy brushes, divorced
      from desert.
It takes a divorce for one to know one knows no one, not only one's
      wife
but your very sons who will always choose the open flower bud.
Good, as they should. Their bones are your bones, strange bones,
      and a
strange selection of their words. They are Uvularia sessifolia (wild
      oats)
and Polygonatum biflorum (Solomon's seal). They outlast the
      holocaust
or not, they're made of matter. These windows need a good
      cleaning.
Leaf-raking. Dusting for ghosts. Ah, sweet peace, perfect rest, there
      are
no ghosts
           adults are trees, teens are shrubs, and children are herbaceous.

Dad's bark is worse than his verse.
When he hits it doesn't really hurt.

The dirt outside the house is soil.
The mouse inside the house is life.

Can't escape the printer or the car, IV
bag, heart monitor, a billion trillion stars.

Snow descends, each flake unique.
My sons' friends, each infinitely

a Greek or Trojan hero. Our morals:
hit not the girls, nor ****. Love more

than you are loved, by a little. Give
but stop before it hurts. Stand together

or fall apart. Which candidate you vote
for less important than to vote. Don't

depend or dote on leaders, housekeeper
and president are gods equally

remote. The human body is a thing of
bone, a strange upright animal, and the

telephone a mystery to other animals.
Everyone and everything is spinning

electrons and the space between.
A great crunch, inverse of big bang,

yr big sister told.

What kind of day was it. Clean
the house. Notice the full moon.
Read a sheaf of old poems.
Listen to jazz tunes. Open mail.

Refuse to make of it more
than it was. What is it for,
don't ask. Squirrel or spider
your cares are yours to savor,

enjoy or fear. Tinnitus
of the ear, sinusitis
of the nose, bale contriteness
of the soul. Moriturus.

Consider economy
soul's eponymity.
The opening canopy
panoramic mystery.

Neither joyful nor depressed.
Not the worst and not the best.
I lived, as did my dentist.
To the east and west, the self.

A year
in which
each day
brings one
tenth inch.
First the
window sills
are covered
then door
jambs. Our
lips are
sealed then
our eyes
shut. Sleep
like this
we've never
known. Will
Spring return?
Unknown. We
care not.

Bright and polite
kids. Deferential
squirrels. Leaders of
leaders. Each man
his own man
living with his mate.
The great and the small,
all, the state.
                       On the other hand,
you find yourself
no hawk
but stuck
in traffic. Lack of
spirit, spiritual identity,
not free or free
philosophically about
no freedom. Caught
no sign
of letting go.

One. Bo-Peep's
sure Woody
is her man, an answer
to the question why
be a toy? Buzz too
would do.
Two. The men at least
have missions
leading other toys
through risky situations
sprinkler weather
or just play,
cleaning schedule.

So it goes
not homosexual
not hetero.
Not defined
by circumstance
or genetic material.
Gone beyond
the creator
to an infinity
that contains
him and us and our
collective minds.
Question is
can it exist
without us?
Would it matter?
Yes, if
that **** squirrel
gets run over.

If you see a hawk
on a bough at field's edge
beyond the corner you should have turned
maybe it's a sign to go on.

Such as during an improvisation on
Flamingo or I've Got You Under My Skin
you play in the wrong key or mode completely
maybe it's a sign to go on, in the wrong key.

Or when my sons cry not wanting
to be alone, I'm upstairs writing
or just enjoying trees in every direction
it too may be a sign to go on alone.

Nearing the end of a too busy week
it starts to snow. Dangerous
but soothing. Wherever you go,
take care. Your memories are too weak,

alone, to keep you alive. Yet
on the other side of the globe, a people
has perfected the art of appreciating
snow from inside their lives. Not

unlike flower arranging or pouring tea
correctly. Tonight I must drive through
hail and storm, down the steep and icy
trail, inside the tunnel dimly lit, me.

I can't blame the teenage girl for being forward,
then passive aggressive. It shouldn't make one angry;
she has her interests and that which bores her.

Or the adolescent boy for being antsy, a little loopy
and aloof. Under that hat he wants to be good,
is deeply disappointed with the world (and the food).

Robert Francis: the finest poet no one reads.
We care not. Such prisms of philosophy need
no acknowledgment. The catamount is only believed

to be extinct. The wildlife tree, a mere bole,
deep in the forest, far off the road, when it falls
takes many squirrel turbines and spider spans down with it.

Noon, Julian has nothing much to do
and likes it that way. That way nothing much gets done today.
Every man, every tree, lives with disabilities.

Crooked finger, rotten bole, under stars, over soils.
The I in my old poems is no longer me. The one
in this one will be someone else soon.

1

The personal is boring
as are my ruminations on the war.
What I need to do I can't try:
wander without shelter in the backcountry.
Or go deeper into the polity,
join a committee or a party.

Minute by minute and season to season
I like my life but what does it add up to, what reason
to go on? No better than a squirrel
or a spider. Spreadsheets, fake books, girls
I want too mildly, modestly or morally to have.
Can the economy and community be called love?

You can be killed and buried in gravel
Your children can be failed at school and marched to war
You can be taxed and sent to gaol for the honor of it
And there's nothing you can do about it.
Will we find the universe not large enough to hold us?
Will planet after planet be too old for us?

If you were president, what would your program be?
What one question is the key
to another's truth. How do you spend your money?
Do you believe in a god who can see
all and understand? Or is he
unable to care, a different species.

2

We take the long view
that as individuals drop
from sight, new enthusiasts
will associate. Legs
give out, lungs collapse,
but we do not let the circle lapse.

For every Aristotle
there are a million toddlers
who will advance no memorable
theories. But the mist
on trees and mountains,
sunrise over desert, are for

every merchant, traveler.
My sons will take on cares,
which toys are theirs,
as their parents grow
older. Slowness brings us
to our goal: do one thing well.

By that what is meant?
Don't be a dilettante.
Not having found the greatness
of a single, clear description,
definition, the greatness comes in
doing everyday what's known.

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?

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.

Might as well go to market.
Gather money, kindling. The economy
scary, debt deep, winter coming. Reminds
me of my youth, cold poor and scared
but living truth? ****. Never
have I understood life's meaning,
significance. Not to say there is no purpose
necessarily, just I don't immediately get it.

Other hand, if you don't think too deeply
about death, this being but a dream, sleep
of a god snoring with apnea or whose alarm
goes off, wakes up for work, spring and expecting
spring's good as it gets. Rhodora in winter
completely forgets what its blossoms looked
like, how attractive to bees and flies!
It's probably healthy that everything dies.

The dire economy can bring us together
or lead us to war. It's cold then warm. Your lover
doesn't write letters anymore giving
thanks or encouragement.
Friends never really know each other,
nemesis. Just as it is impossible to say
what you mean, your closest lover's near but
external, forever. You're alone.

More than ever men have one mind
and finding it's as easy as flicking on the
tv, huckleberry, but that always was
the problem. We march to war in rows and back
in columns. Learning who you actually are
is difficult as sitting still
ten minutes without a thought or want.
Nothing to say. Nothing to do.

Interior solitude, imperative belonging.
Repetitive dreaming. Until you draw
a circle with a dot
at the center. Stop. Full stop.
On a dry rocky ridge, hot
or in a frozen swamp. One heron
and yourself. It is possible to hear
not far, a car, a train, a plane.

I am feeling the shock of fast change. How to cope with it is of course the question. Listen to Beethoven through the neighbor's window? Look up from the page? Appreciate doves even though they are so numerous? I seem to have limitless choices although this cannot be true. Could I have become a computer specialist? Sure! How to remain still in the ever-maddening mandala. To remain still on the outer edge of the wheel is to ride laughingly and pluck at the gold key. I force myself down into the craw of the black vortex New York until I feel the strong oscillations gather rhythm and expel me or accept me.

What do I find within the black electric walls of this unique vortex? I find there is more space between people than I'd ever dared to hope. That my efforts are unnecessary and hopeless. I cancel my subscriptions and stop eating. I embrace wild roots and run through streets with arm around my girl.

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

What is important.
That question.
I part my lips in the middle
      and blow
eat corn chips, dipsy doodles
make love, eat grapes.
                                       In their mere chronology
events have no relation. How was making love
different from eating grapes. Differentiation

is essential to bring order from chaos. The chaos
is the accelerated change created by our own species
whose consummations have a quantum effect
      on the environment.
                                          But the chaos
existed long before, and long after us
in both more serene and violent forms.
Again a duality, but here's why.
                                                       For
each duality may then be said to be in a dual
relationship with another duality, forming
cubes.
             These cubes are difficult to join
with other cubes, unless first they are
somewhat melted.
                                 We were traveling among
these cubes, maneuvering
through a static array of equidistant points
but finding it impossible to avoid striking them.

So why the difficulty adapting. Because no species
before us had to adapt to its own effects upon
environment? No, every species must

but our adaptations (of the world) are so successful
(such fabrications!) One green, one brown

                        Two dead leaves
                              sleep-touching
             ­                       Then a breeze!

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

                        L­oveliness and loneliness
                              these periodic
                                    auras
                                  
surrender to greater force, power, strength
        whatever it is called, the clog of heels
                 upstairs to the door, turning of
                          the key, the taking out of the
                                   garbage down below, car
                                            starting, placed in
                                                              ­   gear, cat
                                                             ­             meowing

anyway, for myself, personally, speaking only
        for myself, because although the Parks
                 Department rakes the leaves as it
                          did last autumn, to keep them
                                   from clogging the sewer system,
                                            I am in a heightened
                                                      ­           state of vibration
                                                       ­                   Quivering

like a long steel pipe banged hard against an
        iron beam. The hard hat feels it in
                 his hand (on the gears) but
                          great buildings are built that
                                   nature destroys in time
                                            with a little wind
                                                            ­     water, fire

air, you glide down through the limpid air
        toward the ninety-seven story abandoned structure
                 remnant of an earlier civilization
                          abandoned but not yet entirely
                                   swept away in slow waves
                                            of change.

Vivacious, practical, self-directed
Mary Bailey, nice body
it makes no sense that just because George
might never have been she suddenly becomes a shy,
homely, lonely librarian without a dog or god.
No, it did not fundamentally matter
whether George was born except to his mother. Potter
might have taken over but why should the morality
of a whole community decline? As for the ship
going down, if a butterfly in China had fluttered
right instead of left 10,000 years ago
the tragedy would have been entirely averted
in fact the whole war would not have happened!

I pleasure in and treasure
my insignificance. If only
I could be overlooked
by the planning board and IRS.

One false note gives the lie
to the whole premise. God died
but was elected posthumously to the Senate
as for the Big Bang theory, when it
supposedly happened what surrounded that
golf ball of matter and now what
occupies the time beyond the farthest edge of space?
My wife over dinner laughs, says Face

it, you'll never know so stop asking questions.
That is how we must make music, mindful of our extreme
limits, our politics, our complete dependence on the theme
of God as feedback, bifurcation and correction.

November and April
when the trees are first bare and last naked
have become my favorite months. All the food eaten
except last rose hips and earliest leeks.
Leaves innocent
as dying men and infants.

Study one plant or animal each morning
before writing anything. All reading -
poetry or prose, truth or fiction -
classified the same, the distinguishing
characteristics being helpful or boring,
beautifully or indifferently written. Then

practice trumpet worried not at all about
my sound or perfection. Afternoon, my sons
return from school, math and (again)
reading, piano. Wednesdays we walk
observe plants and animals and record
our observations to identify and classify

later in the week. Nothing else special
need be done but stay alive.

I see a green tree. It is all I want.
A dry rocky mountain and a hawk
satisfy. To die spiritually in
the hot sun and the body go on
climbing. To take the paths among
the rocks and mahogany bush.
To feed on rock lichen and blue
sky. To not need a house.

To leave my mind in the foothills.
To climb everything but blind. In
the deer shade of the cool aspens.
Forgotten by the work force and the shrew.
Bored as a badger disturbed at
its stream. Free singing as the stream
cutting the gorge. Cool as a hummingbird
in its wet spray. Caterpillar fur.

I stay in the mountains unknown.
The roof soot of the city calls me back.
The museum women shaking their bodies
at the stuffed tigers. The meditating
curators and entrepreneurs. Burro.

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

Old Basho, early Spring, took fond leave of his friends,
closed his small house at edge of village,
and with one peasant companion climbed the long narrow road to
      the North.

Blessed morning!
      the day I left life behind
            but not this world of dew.

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.

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.

In the debate between accessible and difficult poems
Poets' poems and poems for people
Only the single poem and private reader matter

Both kinds and anything between can matter or not
Solid or made of air, a vase or heavy clay ashtray
One word repeated or many like a lei

An acquired taste, like wine, and like wine
Not sustenance, yet men die with their miseries
Uncut without it, news and mere matter

I advise everyone to keep a personal anthology of poems
      that matter
Or not. Perhaps it should be novels. Stones, insect wings,
Feathers, Birds you've seen, People loved.

In Ulzana's Raid,
the Native- and European-American concepts of property
      ownership and rights
are incompatible and irresolvable. McIntosh
had no illusions about that. He said hating Apaches for killing
      whites
is like hating the desert for having no water.
I suspect the movie's not a good source of anthropological
      data
and overlooks the commonalities among human communities
to focus on just a few bold characters
as all art must.

I consider McIntosh fortunate
to have died commensurate with the way he lived his life,
rolling a final cigarette, nothing between him and the desert,
and no gravediggers waiting, jesting, defecating. Also,
he is lucky to have had one last, dispassionate friend
to whom there is nothing left to say, the Chiracahua tracher
Kah-ti-nay.

Last night's performance of Beauty and the Beast
may have been the most victorious, ecstatic, cohesive
moment in our little school's history. Emily was Beauty, a
      filament of energy
who doesn't like to be touched and has been known to punch
boys hard. She had memorized her lines until she was hardly
Emily but only Beauty in a blue dress unselfconsciously
hiking up her tights between the Beast's advances.
Is this done in every American town and the world
over so there's no need to feel lost or lonely
ever?

There is no context for a man
outside the platoon or raiding party, home or shop.
When violence comes to the neighborhood,
the hierarchy of communicants will hold or fold
it is then the peace work proves relevant. I noticed McIntosh,
grizzled as he was, accepted the given hierarchy, a raw
      lieutenant's orders,
as he did the desert and Apaches, with a shrug and
      foreknowledge
of the outcome. If there's anywhere with no Emily or Beauty
we should bring them such blessings at the point of a
gun. But there is no place without Emily, not
the least-known prison in deepest space as long
as we do not hate or hurt or shun
the Beast.

Almost Spring but only February
almost February but only January
only January but almost March.

Almost everyday I play my trumpet
almost every night I ride the trains
every midnight I'm on the trains.

Almost every morning I turn on the radio
every weekday I go to work
every midnight I ride the trains home.

Everyday I spend at work
almost every weekend I play the trumpet
Saturday I ride the train downtown.

Almost every night I get some sleep
only everyday I go to work
every midnight I'm on the trains.

Almost Spring but only February
almost February but only January
only January but almost March.

Sitting, trying to write, nothing
comes to me. Nothing is what it'll have to be.
Over the weekend and immediately
following the election demonstrations in the streets,
Not my president! But today is Monday
back to work and the business of business in America.
Never have we been fierce warriors.
Rhett Butler got that right: in any confrontation
with the state a platoon of new recruits
with automatic weapons outguns the stately
samurai. Ken and I were eating veggie
burgers and drinking local beers over worries
our fellow Americans will soon start shooting
Jews and Asians, lesbians and disabled veterans
whoever's recommended on the news.
There's a learning curve to disregarding tweets
and the remedies offered on facebook. Our refusal
to be more than the sum of ourselves
is our saving grace. Therefore, let
the peaceful transfer of power proceed.
Democracy doesn't guarantee smart choices,
just a chance to correct the mistakes we'll make.

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.

Absolute science and art of being whole
            at one and under no delusion that
                        mankind (or nature) give a ****
                                    whether you amount
                                                to something or not.
                                                            ­Narrowed down
                                                            ­            nothing

nothing but matter matters, matter, content
            of life (serious, love it) hate
                        death, for the hell of it, to
                                    see what it's like in
                                                the heart of
                                                            da­rkness.

Deeper and deeper I go
            but who would bother to **** me
                        or love me? Belonging to the drums
                                    of wooful war I
                                                woof and bay like
                                                            ­every other
                                                           ­             dog.

Down I go to the depths of material life
            the material is spirit wrought
                        by the material world. The
                                    drum and jet plane
                                                the bird and sumac
                                                           ­ the pollen
                                                          ­              seed.

No answer is forthcoming for the young fool
            importunes to ask too frequently
                        the fool's question. What
                                    is my next move. He
                                                steps lightly and does
                                                            ­not seem to care
                                                            ­            quite where.
                                                          ­                          The

material world is reality, my friend
            and sadness is the spiritual root
                        without which the love-nut
                                    may be reached only
                                                by stretching
                                                      ­      the emotions
                                                        ­                bare

raw, where desert delights exhibit
            movement in the sunlit light. Where
                        none find their way
                                    without following leaders
                                                sometimes­ the wrong way.
                                                            ­The path
                                                            ­            is

apart from the dance or the dancer who
            cutting cross country laughs
                        at his perennial fright of being
                                    caught outdoors, out of sight
                                                alone with the wind and rain
                                                            ­for days on end
                                                             ­           in hiding.
                                                         ­                           Up

on the roof, the telephone ringing,
            books getting delivered to the library free,
                        gratis, no fight, no love
                                    a meager understanding
                                                of what rolls
                                                           ­ the earth.
                                                          ­              Gravity

rolls the earth (and may sometimes rock it)
            each of us achieving the gravity of a planet
                        and pulling the world apart with our loves.
                                    Taking existence beyond the limits
                                                set for it, into
                                                            ­the universe
                                                        ­                beyond

We went out beyond the surf
            into the adirondack of trees waiting,
                        wanting nothing, mountains
                                    wanting to grow slowly.

Is war coming? Are we headed for another crazy cataclysm?
My sons, draft age. Only now can I appreciate the pain
so sharp it drains the color from one's eyes, your reason
for living gone in a spasm of violence to be forgotten
never by survivors. This fear could become real as no movie
is surreal enough to distract attention from the certainty
you did not do enough to deflect man's trajectory.

All could be well in the end but history portends
a periodic bloodletting followed by a quietus
without mercy. What's the best that can be said:
he died beside his friends and buddies. Steady
on to your own inquest and rest. A perfect rest
that improves upon the inadequacy of your efforts.
What solace can be found in the remains of marriage.

So you better fight back now even if that means
war comes sooner. At least you're fighting back, but how?
Take a minute to meditate on purpose. Science
cannot save you, neither can religion. Abstaining
from violence with love, letting prisoners go, detaining
no one at the border, inviting Chinese and Russian
scientists to our shores, defusing your own anger before it detonates,

none may be enough to save your sons.
A war president needs war, whatever. A trained
and deadly warfighter. You become what history wants
you to become. You survive if you're lucky, if not
so what, your old parents will be alive only briefly to mourn.
Then they too go to their good graves and the pain dies down.
In the meantime a new generation builds a new space station.

Since the vortex will be ******* up the poor,
let's not let the rich escape untouched. All go down
together, no one hoards gold or gets away with fiction.
If we have to fight let's make sure we fight as one,
the sons of the rich side by side with the poor's sons
and their daughters. You want slaughter? Then
let every city and back road know the new order.

I would rather watch Lalaland ten times over than have
to write this poem. I can leave home and live
in a tent or bunkhouse, eat dinner out of a tin cup
and drink water from a wooden bowl, give up
music and most of my memories to save my sons,
to save the world and avoid this war.
But that rarely happens. One is lost and found in what happens.

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.

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.

Generally cheerful institutions
school and hospital, The Constitution,
roadways with their yellow stitch lines.

Order on the mountainside, in the city,
the veneer is thin, the people thrifty,
the freedom to associate unlimited.

Smoke the cigarette, sound the subwoofer,
I woof and bay like every other dog, proof
one cannot escape the planet, life's foolproof.

Magic's secret- rabbit, lion- the inner
animus emerges from the hat. One eats magicians,
the other's skewered for dinner.

Thus, happy and sad at once, death a solace
and a fearsome fright. As the dashed lines pass,
confidently, and when necessary, I drive fast.

An afternoon, one hundred years of solitude
for our silver maple. Microscopic magnitudes:
the snake's skin, the fly's wing, the man's mood.

Jack just had a big fight with his son Zach about it. He said
I'm tired of hearing how you're too tired to do your homework.
      You're
not too tired to play basketball or Xbox. That was that after Zach said
Whatever.
                   Visiting the nursing home you think Never
will I allow myself to live long enough to end like that, that's
a fact. But promises are broken all the time, to others and the self,
and that one probably will be too unless your face is shattered
into shards of broken glass, by accident.
                                                       ­          Then it will be quiet, too quiet.
Day by day goes by until the day you receive news of your disease,
personal, unique, irrevocable, musical and factual, withal.
That's that you think but in fact it's not. You discover (circle with a dot)
      dying's
much like living. That that's true until the body just stops barking,
      breathing.
Forever.
                Salvation in the details (sub-atomic particles). Granite
or sandstone, ash or oak, Odysseus or King Lear. Get it? Not yet.
For someone who doesn't want to be anonymous, Jack's anonymity
      runs deep.
His work sunk in a tar pit or peat. The worthwhile effort is to meditate on
      that,
accept and repeat.

Back from the desert and loving it
both the visit and the return.
The powerful plane deiced in Chicago.
Brittlebush, difficulty distinguishing acacia from ironwood.
Mesquite, and plenty of paloverde.
A good jazz band in Phoenix, their own style, no apology.

Could you also love your cancer? The vicious attack of a hedgehog
      cactus?
The winter storm that kept us on the tarmac three hours
followed us home. Used to be
when weather made the headlines, that was good news.
No more. Those melting icecaps and incoming meteors.
Some pray, some stay still, some keep playing.

Anyway, notwithstanding inexorably expanding or otherwise rapidly
      contracting universes
I saw cercocarpus, phainopepla, tomentilla, saguaro, and a great
      guitarist. Prayers were answered.

This summer, as ever, there's much to do.
But only one or two things I want to do.

I told Alan that, like him, I'm never bored.
But today, like a teenager, I'm both tired and bored.

The long expanse of summer stretches forward. Alan plans
the next 2 years in advance, always moving forward. I can't plan

the next 2 hours, sitting on my ****, undecided whether
to clean the house, make a list of prospective donors, or check the
      5-day weather

forecast. Fires out west, hurricanes south, drought here
in the east where the garden phlox withers and the corn's stunted. We
      hear

prophecies of armageddon, doom, but humans may go on another
      thousand, million or billion years
undaunted. What is that to you. A day alone in your room and a year

are inexplicable. Now and then a vacation, baseball game, night of
      love.
A divorce, a death, a drouth. To survive and prosper we must love

all of it, insect infestations and world wars, cloud curlicues and square
      dances, work
and weekends off. Knowing the unknowable = never knowing how the
      world works.

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.

The perfect year,
two equal halves.
One with leaves
one without.
Forest thinning out.
Bring indoors
swing sets, pools, smiles, thoughts.

Having enough and not much else is a lot.
The transfer of funds is a loving gratitude for work well done.
Not self-sufficient unless self
is defined as family, community and nation.
The world.
Universe.
Thus,

I settle my haunches like a bear content, snug into coming
      winter.
House will be warm notwithstanding the Muslim-Judeo-
      Christian condition
not to mention the Hindu-Buddhist vortex.
Searching space
for an entity
to unite us as humanity.
Carbon-based, earthbound
meeting, understanding and absorbing
the clicking, algorithmic logic
of passionately computing species, insects, machines, bacteria.

A world moves only as fast as you think.
If it moves faster you're not thinking, you're it, dead, chemicals
      redistributed
in an ever more painless process.
What are my feelings exactly?
Systemic joy.
Lovely the logic
we have invented and applied
identifying, specifying, classifying.
It can keep you busy
counting, praying
while all the leaves are falling.

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.

These are Jack's commitments: to his body
exercise, stretch, heal if possible and prepare for death.
To his sons: love and respect and teach, learn
to be aware of the effects of his anger or forever be an angry man.

To his wife: in equal portions serenity and uncertainty,
the early years, the middle years, and the final years.
To the community: to treat it as distinct unknowable individuals
much like heavenly spirits but also dangerous animals.

To poetry, religious in its contemplation
of experience under the eye of eternity,
in the realm of the gift and the realm of the sacred:
his individual experiment gone well or wrong.

To his student: not to hurt for gain or inflict more pain
than stimulates growth. Both of them are students
of each other, the periodic table and the civil war.
Other than that, expect to forget and be forgotten.

To his friends who are merely friendly: lonely
inexorably, working hard and playing hard without self-pity
severe about the law and believing in the death penalty
they're the men you'll want in your foxhole warriors at the gate.

To himself by which I mean mind or something hidden, intestate:
a quiet place and time to think deeply or simply
but not too easily to quiet the questions, to know
his bones and the particles of sunlight they stilled and slowed.

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.

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.

The seasons inure us to loss
whether a vote of confidence
or no confidence
we are neither more nor less

in our hearts and souls. We are still
whole, history
forgets our story
but immortalizes us, nothing is annulled.

Today's board vote affects my livelihood
how and what I hunt and gather,
money, but not whether
I live or die. That's God's and luck's neighborhood.

I like capitalizing God
although I don't believe and can't imagine
an intelligence managing or wanting to manage
this interface of rock and flesh, fire and sod.

The Knowledge
tells us how to rebuild after an apocalypse,
not let the circle lapse,
to outlast the holocaust. I have no vantage

from ridges I ascend
Cercocarpus, turbinella, dry and hot
places worry, planning, thought
stop. May they inure me to my end.

There cannot be two identical things in the world. Two
hydrogen atoms
offer infinite locations within their shells for electrons.
Thus, nothing can be definitely eventually known.
All to the good
because golf and chess and basketball, as well as
mathematics, language and genetic recombination
are systems
for discovering the possible (which is more attractive than
the probable)
in what we thought we thought about the sun and clouds.

In Borges' The Parable of the Palace, the poet's attempt
to replicate
the world in a word results in what, surprisingly, is
his termination
personal obliteration a piece of anti-matter that
occupies no known shell in this or any other instantiation.
Got the plot?
We are "moving through some allegory between a City of Hope,
where history
has been abolished, and a City of History, where hope can be slipped in
      only
as contraband."

Actually, the recombinations
which make prediction and intuition fortunately hopeless and each
      individual
an experiment
gone well or wrong, are represented by equations of such complexity
they differ
not at all from the very stars and neurons whose interactions we wish
to count.
The world keeps up or ahead of the collective attention span by
      offering
inexorable expansion
or otherwise rapidly contracting universes, big bang by big crunch.

I like that, I like that I can't know what I'm doing (until it's done).
      Therefore,
faith and understanding
(hope and history) become one absolutely fluid quantum motion, a
      lovely early
Spring morning
a thunderstorm, a terrifying and (for someone) final tornado or
      volcano.
Oh well.
From his earliest published work, Ronnow displays a fascination with
      death,
the world without the self, a ridiculous consideration considering time's
geological pace
6.5 x 1010 sunsets and sunrises over mountains and deserts (for every
merchant, traveler)
themselves rising and setting via magmas, oceans, tectonics, meteors,
      forever.

Do your homework I said to Zach. Why bother was his attitude.
I explained
time is an illusion, an invention man made, there is only change. Birds
know this.
But the calendar and colors, genus and species, bacteria and galaxies,
are the innumerable wonders about which Sophocles said man's
most wonderful
why because we identify or classify birds by the complexity or beauty
of their songs.

Today is April 1st. Transit strike.
Mayor Koch accepting the fact. Myself,
far from crisis central, in North
Manhattan, measuring the temperature
of my apartment. In the sun it is
warm. The crows have returned again
for Spring.

Today life and the city are o.k. Watching
cat in the morning sun. Drinking tea.
My 1300 dollars will melt like summer
snow, but in the meantime, like samurai
I do not show my fear. I remain still
as on the subway and prepared to fight.

I am sitting under the emergency brake
when a coiffured Latin woman rushes aboard.
The doors close but she decides she wants
out. She bangs on the door as the train begins
to move. I see it happen on her face,
she finds the red cord and pulls,
no hesitation.

Maybe someone's hand or foot was caught
in the door. Maybe she's just selfish and
impetuous, got on the uptown not the downtown
side. Maybe the friends she could have
been with didn't get aboard. Whatever
her reason, she acted and the train obeyed.

Some of the passengers sit through the
whole thing, some of us stand. Myself,
I stand, look for the hand caught in the door.
Later, walk home through the pouring rain.
Today is April 1st. Transit strike.
Sky blue, temperatures mild. Democracy
is great.

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?

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.

Something created. Does the creator think ahead
or spill a storm. Rain happens. We supply the
reasons. Evaporation of water collecting over
huge expanses, condensed and pushed as clouds
over the land. We say it makes us sad or depressed.
We want to cry.

You describe the America you know and if you
are ashamed of yourself for what you see, you lie.
Or don't look. Loud noises of automobiles and
fumes. Today in Riverside Park, leaning on a rail,
the dead leaves and snow reminded me how far
from nature and life I am. The snow blew
in from the west. People passed in a smooth
slow line in front of me. Dogs trailing one
another. People hiding until crises bring them
out. Their dog smells another dog between the legs.
The master runs over to stop him. Maybe he
thinks they're going to fight. Doesn't want his
big German shepherd to hurt her dachshund.

Guy runs past in gray sweats on his tip-toes.
Glances at me. Another passes in blue sweats. Looks
longer. They think I'm a mugger. They are not
sexually attracted. I'm an opponent. I want something
they have. I look surly. Why aren't I out
running, disciplining myself, making myself healthy,
doing something. What brings you out here. You're not
doing anything but watching us and staring at the ground.

            Walking down Broadway I realized I've never lived here and still don't. Two women window shopping is strange to me. They talk about the clothes. They are friends. I slow down, I don't feel so cold. Stroll, looking at people is like a sunny day and it's a carnival. Streets different in different weather. Rainy nights are good. Cold rainy nights. Bars filled and warm. Streets empty and cold. People pass and look as members of a fraternity. They need someone and don't hide it. They will try anyone out for one night. They have tea together. They go for a drink in some neutral place. They go straight to bed in the dark. They can't see the face.

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.

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.

Nothing more intimate than sleep
wake before dawn, go downtown
prepare for tomorrow, come home from work late.

Most cities prosper undisturbed
sleeping peacefully
while the tide goes out.

Are we asleep or are we dancing,
surrounded by buildings,
a primitive fertility dance in the forest?

Sleeping in my clothes,
sleeping in my underwear,
two dead leaves, then a breeze!

Fall asleep by the river,
in front of tv,
soon I will know who I am.

In the last days you may be found sleeping in the laundry mornings,
or sitting in the holy spot
gazing at a crescent moon.

Get up early but gotta nap,
winter afternoons or summer heat
Thanatopsis, Big Comfy Couch.

Sleep in the bed next to your wife
that way when life ends
someone misses you.

That sounds harsh but we’re matter of fact
about the fact of death.
Death is most of all like sleep.

Doctor, engineer, lawyer, soldier,
writer, poet, that’s the pecking order,
get some sleep, get over it.

Not the kind of gal who’ll have *** twice
on the first date. When that happens
marriage, babies, graduations, tragedies, sleep.

Headache, surgery, through it all
there’s sleep, a haven, heaven, hovel, cave, raven,
a place to be with eyes wide open.

Don’t have a hissy fit
or case of colon cancer, get 8 hours
shuteye in contiguous array.

If not, listen to a TED talk, they like explaining things
Selected Shorts solves insomnia,
The Moth Hour, the peaceful father, mother.

Sweet pleasing Sleep!
in Hades
where the lights are always blue, gentian actually.

Every third thought doesn’t have to be about death.
Sleep together, get laid.
Sleep. How memories are made.
Sleep. In the palm at the end of the mind or on another plane.

One will not live to see the end
of the geopolitical drama,
the existential dilemma—

the small choices people make that change their lives.
They ought to be terrified but they’re blithe
because you can’t know what you’re doing until it’s done.

Acting silly, solving problems.
Scientific method, situation comedy.
Dinosaurs. Sore losers.

Kayak on the Hackensack.
Malebolge. Hoboken.
It was dark in there! It was dark!

You can’t say to people I think I’m dying
because we all have that feeling,
it’s so ubiquitous it’s not worth mentioning.

For your given name
take Destiny.
But survive.

Saturday’s the sweetest
day. You’re off the clock.
Participation’s optional

weedsmoking, videogameplaying,
tvwatching, anonymouslawnmowing,
whatif whatnot oldtimer.

Pass the ******* ball!
I say to Ray who never passes.
The past isn’t dead, it never even passes.

Short sleeves today?
Prepare for a powerful anesthesia.
The afterlife is now.

Soot on LA highway signs. Billboard of you,
a real estate agent. All endeavor slides
toward inertia, extinction, forgetfulness.

It’s very tropical. Vegetation invades
the house unless constant inputs of joy
apply. The scientist in you feels the

great ape in you. The great ape feels
death growing wide. What about work?
I devote my present to my future existence.

In what way, in what sense
does one continue to resist. As
a dessicated cell, a mole of elements,

an ancient’s aura, a daguerreotype-like
shadow on a sidewalk, persistent headache,
paleolithic herbivore, potential energy, will.

Some wake up and pray, say thanks for
another day. Others curse their luck, stale breath,
the very thought of the rosy dawn makes them ill.

Lonely as leaf fall.
Nature knows no pity or self-pity
according to antiquity, the roof soot of the city.

I admire fire, tools and ore. Agriculture.
Cities, empire. Trading and taking (war).
Numbers, counting, writing. Libraries, discoveries, zero.

And the single-minded universe
that’s only a paper moon
without your love.

You are a cockroach

you are a big cockroach crawling up a pegboard
the kitchen light suddenly shines
and you must get through to the other side
but testing every evenly spaced hole you find
your shoulders will never fit
and to get away you've got to fall.

                                                          ­    fall
or refuse to crawl and wait motionless
until inspiration with an overview filters through
or you die of hunger, lack of love, fear of death
or the outlandish hands of another angry animal
with a wisdom wiser
but infinitely useless as your own.

so you die. but now the big hands are gentle
and you receive a respite of thoughtlessness
and the garbage grave has warm chicken bones
and you don't care what happens to you
or the oldest species of proud recalcitrant insects
or procreating it or foraging a grubby kitchen sink

for food. the joy of making life is new. let go,
and through the night be carried carelessly along.

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.