father of the bells swinging.
great weights
to give praise while
we set aside our silent
alleluias.

what gives us
cause to build with
symbols, brick upon
storied pages, is

the opportunity
to teach us
generosity,
could there be a
greater gift than that?

we seek unusual
beauties, a flower
in a dying woman's hair,
bearing witness
of the fresh
clean linen
table cloth,

hidden there small
flecks of flesh
and spotted blood,
we become,
swinging in the
breath of god,
as sounds
from the bells
summoning us
to sleep.

there shall be for me
prayer this evening
that manages saying little
yet filling a desire
that will not be put off.

effortless prayer
by bandy stream
beginning without plan,
simply beginning,
and joining to me,
a rough hewn faith,
smell of a wet god,
the sand the stream
springs from.

my prayer
and the creek flows,
a voiceless plea
seeking nothing.
grateful to stand
in the pale light,
empty and small
and wanted.

the prayer
of a doubting man,
casting about for answers
grown comfortable
letting question
reside elsewhere.

humbled that my prayer
joins night song,
a prayer with each
pulse of my blood,
constant until i stop praying.

the traveler makes song
heard in many places, rising,
ending like tree top disappearing
into low living cloud.

he knows our uncertainty,
clothed in the
vain gold authority
of hard men,
bent as the tree
and harder yet to please.

i have dined with the traveler
many times.  
at opulent table sitting
foreign and small.
in the bowels
of the wood where his
song rang the sweetest.
in the tempest of a kitchen
table, a sudden swift storm.

i struggle with the lyric
of his song, so vast, so simple.
in language sharp and clean,
that speaks to us this one true
thing:

love only; the you as the i
and that which is above all else.

these are
fixtures,

daily grinding superficial.

with little
resemblance to the

prophets we pray to.

desperate men with facile
tongues,

perfect answers
to petty, practiced
questions.  

and they, being so many with
one discernible face,

one alterable religion,
liquid to the palms of

deathly thirsty children,

aim

where aim would do

the most
to damage

and we

fail

victim

with only ourselves

to blame.

beyond the rooftops
and scorned trees
against a sky where little falls
without record
masha melts snow for tea.

living has become constant listening.
broke back houses and twisted trees
give small shelter.
masha lives like her cat
listening for small sounds

she waits by grey ashen mounds
of what was once her garden,
a hole in the ground
that had been her bedroom.

she drinks her thin tea and waits.
she knows the soldiers
will come soon,
they always do.
they took her husband
they'll be back for more.
soldiers always arrive without warning

peace comes in small doses.
when is does come
it comes when you're not listening.
it crawls through thick air
muddied words and broken promises.

masha drinks her tea
pets her cat
and waits.

listen to the carefully made sounds,
crafted by southwestern winds,
full in birdsong woven
through the forest's top,
the rattle of seed in pod
and cone falling
upon the damp earth we tread.

this way is old and legend says,
it was the way of others,
keepers of these woods
before it was turned
stone and branch,
before it was deeded and sold
given one generation to the next.

the deed will continue only so long
until deep fertility reclaims
and renews, a marriage
of god and time, as
the wild grape, honeysuckle
and thorn over comes our paths,
a lover within whose body receives the seed.

and always the sounds linger
a broader scripture,
a bridesmaid singing in praise and love
and slight jealousy that the feast should be
for her and if not,
then for her whom she loves.

as this place is for us now in this moment
and soon for those whom the earth's
current will flow through,
it moves here now,
like it moved here then.

who marked the birch
different in the skin,
and placed it at the spot
and the time to be caught
in the slanted rays of the sun,
at the tired end of day?

who brought me here
like i've been brought before,
unprepared for the gifts presented?

what is in common,
the aging of my open hands
and the leaf less birch
stark white in contrast
to the woods surrounding?

that i, in skin
stretched over bone frame,
am still and bent
and white and waiting,
grasping at the sky as the tree,
that rises beyond me,
showing me the faith of the hand
feeling the wood,
rooted and reaching,
touching the vitals of the earth rising,
ever rising to the underside of god.

geese above distracting pines,
above the endless communion
of spring to brook to river.
given a holy name
brought by stern men and women
from their distant island homes.

an immigrant's wind blowing
bending the limbs low to touch grasshead,
pulling from the ****** earth
the walls among which they slept.

they built to love, shovel and pick,
brick and mortar and
they that built, named anew an old country.  
giving names to capture, change and claim,
and love in their native tongue.

new names married to old,
difficult to spell,
meanings hidden,
musical in their mystery.
baptized in war and glory
mowed low in the fields
a sacred harvest.

the blood of the named
fueling the mystery of the unnamed.
we are nourished by it.
embellishing it with our own weak deeds.

as unpronounceable as the wind,
we become simple guttural vowels
in the living name
of the distracting pines
and conjoined waters.

love ignites
in the pocket of the soul,
if such places exist at all.  

what text, who studied, how was it
measured,  the growth of inspiration.
from small unrecognized note,
through the questioning shadows
on your face, to the solid
pull of willful creating.

what evidence would we
find that the ordinance
by which we consented
was nothing more than
the trapping of a mad night.

i am as comfortable as
leaf released from limb settling
as bloom's potential,
to say that i loved you.
without knowing why.

on the far side
of a field protected
in the space between the hedges
and the hardwoods of mourning
anna lies forever
watching the ocean.

a place salted by tears for her,
and laid out through seasons
begging not for change, anna rests,
as autumn sleeping,
always dreaming, beholding.

and above in endless passing
long angled lines,
flying to warmer climes
by the ten thousands,
great birds on the wing flee
the frozen winds coming,

and the seasons turn for them,
and one hundred thousand more fly,
and the country become as silent
as her trembling kiss
transparent in the blue moon lighted earth,
beneath a gleaming white crucifix,

where i will plan my days
to spend with her,
the flesh that is her words.
the words that were her blood.
again and often,

sometimes to burn them as fuel
to warm myself,
and others to rest beside them
as she rest now.

blackbirds rise
to grey october as they have
and will, gathering in

worshiping flocks
growing in number, moving
with one thought, as one
body.

they are in numbers
such that the sound of wing
and caw, blankets me
below

in the mystery that lies
beneath the beauty,
above both,
the precision.

and i stand struck with no question,
mixed fear and gratitude,
praising as them,
the same god.

we come again to the season
when what we think we see
is bent and the hands that reach
to straighten are then bent.

when throughout this land
at every turn hourly, we
are bought by the rhythmic
chants that despite knowing better,
should know better.

there is an odd balance,
between amounts, wealth, annuity,
versus the naked broken truth
and the persistent questions
of why should we do that
to ourselves and each other
and how quickly we unlisten.

i am inelegant in my despair
powerless as bird in net.
i am near desperate with
desire to clean floors and windows
and shake by the shoulders
the cringing elite and the
folding others;  decide, i plead, that
we are one, and speak it that way.

hard scrabble taught
small as the properly poor,
it is a shame how she looked
like a dead moth spread winged,
taped to a piece of wax paper,
taken to school and pinned down.

festered in a blue black
skin, those few visible examples
of the love thrown at her unwashed.
nobody, but nobody would plan
to spill so much in so small a space,
but she did, with a fog in her eye
as she did it, and as hard as i wanted to try,
i couldn’t make eye contact.

what came next was what
she remembered to pack, along with some
missing skin. i wished it were mine.
i’d gladly take it upon me, and she could
be scot free pretending to be
any number of wild things.

but she sat with me,
frozen backward looking,
explaining with awkward words
and punctured theme,
as i wrote fresh notes for god, like clean snow.

nothing prepared me for the sudden absence,
the dead moth freed of the unpinned wax paper.
as i cleaned the spill with long forms and reports
i was grateful i tried to look in her eyes.
tired in the moment to be there still,
one man choosing to pray.

we walk the path to the spring
where the waters come constant
from the ground unfreezing
warm enough for duckweed to thrive
even in blue winter,
deep with snow.

the air holds few sounds,
the snap and tumble of tree limb,
river's crashing iced sheets,
the click and kew of the junco,
wind, amplified one hundred fold
razor sharp in the cold.

how does the waters know
who told it; here.
it's here that you will rise,
at the end of a path in a small cleft,
said by locals to be the gathering
place of the ancients, the fairies
and the dead who died before their time?

we come to the spring and beside it
as deep in the snow
as we are in its mysteries,
we become a part of the story
reassured that the promise
of the thaw is as constant
as the coming march sun
and the ever flowing water
at our feet.

i step on the bare earth
and have kept quiet ever since,
afraid my words would
shear the history
that stands among us,

there is nothing between me and the sun,
yet i hear obsolete calls to dominion,
becoming the rituals of oils,
the bottles of the high priest
at his battle ground,
    
and his religion, the sword, the horror
of which settles questions better
than it answers them,
should be turned inward if
it weren't for the immense sadness
of our grieving diety.

i have escaped by roving for now
through a lush country,
green beyond belief in itself, where
the sweet root calls as birds in
summer heat and peace is an
underwhelming joy,

but i won't stand forever
i can't, it will on its own,
rise and fall determined
by our bleeding needs,
determined by the distance between
footfalls placed
the worth of all worths.

i have traveled a long way
to be waiting in a cheap motel

passing time reading the words
of dead russian poets

waiting for you to arrive.

four am is especially bleak,
and no restless sleep is
as purely restless,

no sound
more angry forlorn and
temporary than cars on the
highway besides.

i would never know by your voice
filtered by space and electronics

what is moving through you.
i must look in to you.

so i wait now for you to knock,

alone in the company of
pasternak's tears

until i see you and understand you
are well.

his talk was the talk
of the good soil prepared
in forethought to receive
names as seed.

cleared of bramble level smoothed,
clods broken to their fineness,
believably watered.

yet his way passed
over fallow abused field
where he loved more than most
the struggling roots
that survived pushing to air;
trees of fruit and wood.

the same wood he carried,
the same wood they pierced him to.

the sweetest fruit hanging
from lovely stunted trees
offered daily to those broken
among the rocks and thorns.

let us cultivate here,
seeded as bells ringing in
ancient summons,
that to serve is to be at peace.

let us not put aside, for
distance days hence,
looking not away but towards
this challenging landscape
with a child's innocence.

for our comfort is found in the hills,
found by night lamp,
found out bound on long
singing passages,  
found in the praise of
our infinitesimal days
and knowing what it means to
give and receive.

we will move inches
as if in great division, the
soft foundations of creed.
suffer the glance of the pure,
strain beneath the weights
that we have shouldered,
in preparation to receive the gifts
given without regulation.

to love the hand of the builder
and question the steward his excess.  
to seek, clarification and pardon,
knowing that in it, it is frail,
and we come in peace.

i must complete
this morning's traditions,

smoothly as best i can,
transition the dead bolt turning.

there is the feast to
prepare,

eulogies to compose
to heroes frozen to the floors
of transit points,

vast blue-iced miles
alter nothing

no amount of looking can change
the distant truth

that these wrinkled traditions
possess us

like great white birds flying
to siberia,

i am old here without
your tongue

it is foreign,
as foreign as yours and mine.

it is not a straight road through
country unplanned, alongside hard watered
river, through storm driven mist, that we must
travel, impelled unresisting forward.

the road changes soft to smooth, pocketed
to near non existent and how we
should move determined long before
there was road in this country ever.

and there where green tree stands in
groups unmanageable, refuge to so much life,
where we can stop sheltered, rest. kneel before
broken limbed overgrown communion rail.

to receive as heart and body,
stimulating the work of our tongues,
to speak and digest and taste, the fuel
we seek to continue

through a country unplanned,
unknown stormed and graced, but a country
given us.  gifted in ways we'll not know,
pulling us towards.

above the tilted gate,
rusted open
the white flock flies.

and i, walking below in
freezing hours in her untended lawn,
read the passages of her doubt.

the auctioneer's stare picks the pockets of vague men
as i read in her bible
the words of Isaiah underlined in red ink.

words cast aside,
an old lover inseparable for years.
knowing that her winter is certain,  
they point with bony finger
the direction she must go.


above in logical formations pushed and pressed,
they come before night,
smelling hard and arctic in their bones.
in their passage over, i count them
and their number provokes wonder.  

they disappear and more yet will come to be home,
to stream and glistening shore,
guests in the fields above a world in need of faith,
residing in its protection.

they simply resign
to that which compels their movement,
their beating hearts,
they are the rhythm,
the part and the whole.
and we mark their numbers and times and worth,
divorced from their value as they fall from the sky.


she had heard thunder and wind and
remembered when she longed
for breathing peace and the terrible grasp
around her breast to be released.

and her heart, as it was then,
was stirred to creation, invoking the name of the lord.
bent on her knees as the trees of the olives
she shifted her weight, a moon before a passing star.
she knew gratitude as wealth and prayer became easier
in the reflection of a dying eye.


she wandered parallel to the streams
of well traveled witness, to jerusalem.

she disrobed in a moment's sun,
and become dark in her losses.
cried dry sobs as the desert craved her foot prints.

stood before the one true love as he departed,
then returned to the dark hall and black alleys.
soft as the cloth in veronica's hand.

she searched the face, the delicate eyes and feather like love.
and the word, like smoke escaped his
lips and hung in the air around her head.


it is the rock, the sand and the salt
that will tell us the story. the obvious story.
the hidden story, the forgotten.

no amount of rain could flush the
damaged soil to the sea.
the nail was placed and the hammer spoke.
the report rose through the air
as transparent as smoke,
echoed off the blooded walls assuming a
mortal weariness, driving deeper each strike
in to the caged centuries.

**
the white flock passes,
taking all but the untakable
delaying the hunger we know,
and forgetting the one we shouldn't.

in the hands of a stranger
her dusty iconography departs
incapable of being replaced
his is not the wooden nailed corpus perfect in death,
and he will come with you, or not,
soft as the cloth in veronica's hand.

of all that dwells in this place,
grows, crawls, dies
and disappears.

of all that lived here
before there was foot fall
and arrogant machines,
only their ghosts remain undisturbed.

we slice the sod with shovels
look for evidence in history
count the rings in the fallen oaks
catalogue grasses and their brethren

use words to define,
explain and contain
and at times delight,
and render language
to conquer.

for without language
we fear we'll not know
that all that was here
was here without words.

but the ghosts of the field
remain untouchable, unrecorded
knowable only by tongueless spirit
and the unfathomable grace
of knowing god without
language.

in to the whiteness of day
rich with a somber breath
hushed not to awaken the past,
by a broken cistern and

christ like in resistance,
and loved for the blood that runs
through her,
that morning,
that hour, that moment, that single
beat of a heart, was a holy gift,
as she gave birth
to a child in poverty
and splendor.

fragile intentions
claiming an innocent title,
worthy of the words coming from
the pens of dead russian women.

i would have called to you in the brittle
aftermath of ancient celebrations,
through regiment of pine, across the frequent
winds cradling ****** new life
and you would have replied.

but all i know of you now is the vanished drops
of sweat fallen and dried,
the words echoed across a frozen war
and coming to rest by me each evening,
the purposeless push of our mother,
the wind and your curiosity.

the slack hours
of morning 
in grateful silences,
calm room, a promised sun 
not yet cleared 
the marvel of horizons, 
focuses.

i cast off sleep and
dream and 
look for ways 
in to that thinly 
settled country. 
i should beg 
to trespass yonder, 
beyond even that.

further yet to where 
escaped poems sing,
wildly, nightly. unfamiliar
comfortable terrain.

i pull from 
that darkness
the next slickening 
tendril of thoughts 
clodded with words.

and with it 
fresh in my hand
and before i drop it,
as an old man would
on to the hard floor 
of brittle memory,
i commit it to a vague 
electronic permanence.

again and often enough
until it forms whole
as the sun clears
the marveled horizon
and my wondering
resumes.

in the homelands
there was doubt and grief.

doubt and grief are not empty things.
not hollow passing moments
carried in sacks.

in the villages there was betrayal,
a driven spectacle.
racked in the hours of hard labor, hard sweat,
the vision of blood soaking into the soil.

upon the lands
of the sweetest apples,
of gathering storm
and blood rescinded
void of worth,
they stood as distant witness
to wealth and privilege,
brothers in hunger.

as soft whole things
blood and hunger are currency
spent reviving,
making soaking ground fertile,

at its ending with hammer and lance,
all that was humanly vital,
brought perfect rains to a restored country,
showing us as passing storm,
balance restored,
our blood's rescinded relief, valued.

they bleed now our blood.

gray music seeping
like black water through stones,
raw in the line and beat
smelling as bone and fuel,

she crosses the water
a fog, worrying
the river to waves, beating
like a snare against metal bow,
i believe she would sink
if not for the music
and the ****** of a distant god.

within a lowering gray sky
a sun, brighter indescribable, grayer,
penetrates not to gleaming slide,
but her smoky *******,
making her shadowless
and above it all;
song.  

naked, working,  
pushing her mile
upon mile, a commandment,
to become as arresting gear,
quietly succumbing
to her mechanical graces
until the final passing notes.

we are broken engined,
and where we come to be
is beautiful in the way tradition is.
in the way the deep woods is.

it is old, quiet in layers.
a patient world, it must be.
a full country knowing life
and life within life.
great and lesser trees crowded upon each other.

as cold night begins in blue air leaking grey,
cars come by finding in their lights, us.

we watch eastward over the road
another light appears, rises,
gracious, slow, permanent.

not the sharp focus as the autos,
but glowing, spirit,
great in its distance,
though close and revealing.
it is the light we need to listen.

for in the still space between cars,
we imagine we were born
to hear the cold air,
the wet language of near by brook,

to hear the release of walnut
and leaf, their soft arrival to earth again,
the movement of small animals
seeking protection and food,

we know with more than just our ears
the sounds that live here,
have always lived here.

and we, church quiet,
know we were drawn here to listen
as each breathes in the moon's lighted air.

soon another car cuts the quiet
and the dark,
and we move again,
knowing the task ahead
begin the striking metal to metal,
with tools in our white hands

finding mechanical alien movement,
know its dark disease,
correct what we can,
and when engined again,
we leave.

when my love has fled
the ninth moon to the gulf of mexico
and she arrives there warm,
i will walk the glazed field
beneath the moon of long nights.

when my heart is broken
not by her absence nor regrets
but by the shadows cast
in the moon's blue light
on the snow,
i will make songs
of her leaveing.

for i have known her return
for seven decades
i have seen that promise realized.

and after i become moonless
i will stand where promise meets the past,
both overdue and out of reach
hostage to hunger to bare my arms to the sun,
and sleep
a leaf in the glow
of an opal moon.

faith alights,
as the egret
white beyond safety,
settles to seek food on
the edge of a drainage ditch.

obvious and beautiful,
he is where he is,
intent,
frozen in focus
rendering to the egret
what is for an egret, rendered.

that i should stand,
at the table,
this sabbath as egret beside
polluted water,
taking what nourishes,
discerning what is of god.
leaving the remainder to
his judgement.

choosing to rest within his rest,
longing to see what i have sought,
praying to learn how the egret prays.

precise reflection
softly demands
it be dormant
often unspoken
unrecognized
until it shows itself
unexpected, beautiful
calming and undeserved.

as unremarkable
as an old woman
kneeling at the communion rail
in an empty church.
where she would be
in old second hand clothes
the ointment of silent praise.

faith resists that the notions
consuming her matter.
the act of prayer becomes balm.
the words beget rhythm.
the cadence spawns desire.
in precise unlistening,
silence becomes pregnant.
for in the empty church
silence has an echo.

she will pass soon
a martyr to the bloodless
painful birth of forgiveness
kneeling at a worn communion rail
requiring saints
needing stainless objects to clutch

until she gathers before her
like children to her breast  
what she must remember
and says goodbye.

lost at birth sent to be
a sweetening balm, weighed
on scales leveraged in secular debt,
who would,
should listen?

what will change, the
palm print on the ledge we escaped over,
our witness to the twist in code,
rogue consecrations of law beyond touch?

would the potent display of mystery,
turbulent above us unseen
save for the vapored breath of god,
cower us and we stand in frozen love?

to where might we escape, to be
unknown, blended in to an
indistinguishable sameness.

having failed in disguise, we turn to
the promise of pitiful words
and pray;
we are small, let us move.

often i heard her
under her breath say, father forgive them.
but she had fallen to disbelief
caught black sails in an internal wind.

and never had there been a night so long
or beautifully still as the small cross
laid on her breast as she looked up
to whisper a silent te deum.

to my ear it was weak.  
a thin fabric over the real.
she asked, who are we
among this scattered dust
wandering among the forest and hills,
to think we are more important
in the enameled blackened night
than the winded stars?

that vulnerability is a place to
fall through, drop lower from.
where are we in the harried minutes
between the rising of day, the density of sleep,
wishing as pretenders in the garden?

finding what is broken,
things to be repaired,  
should we ask the rounded questions
while around us elevated to disbelief
garish in speech and gesture, our gods fail us?

like mountains that push their way slowly upward

fingers prying at the edges of frayed paper

tongues dry from ******* hot air

my heart beats in my neck and wrists

and i know



how one can cross vast plains on wheels of love

pulled and pushed towards an end

impossible and distant.

how one can lay spent, exhausted

doubting what is meagerly ours.

counting what is lost and gained.

living and dying as desert river
at the whim of the wheel.



like mountains moving by inches towards the coast,

nostrils flared by the acrid smell of burning life,

eyes red from looking and looking,

my flesh tenses

and i know



how one can settle to birth an immigrant wind

and change without knowing,

half way home,

the place and direction we travel.

our name and kinship,

perfect water.

until the final lovely steps

and we lay asleep in the arms

of our past.



like mountains falling,

tops rounding with time,

eyes focused on coming showers,

lungs full and clean,

my heart beats in my neck and wrists

and i know.



that this instance, this place, these hands and arms that

soon will rest,

shall work and make and design and drive

and i know

that this time was the perfect time

to have stood with you and carved our names

in the rock that is our history.

prologue:

i see the footprint
here, placed to follow
into

the dwelling of the
Maker of outside
and beyond,

not of mortar and joist.
a craftsman's eye
reveals to me

the love of the labor,
the infinite plan
for each small part.

i am small before the story
a single tiny piece
beloved as if no other.

*
waiting for the morning star in this dark place,
as from the window a lamp shines.
they wait through long night,
by it, to be first to see morning star.

as night lifts cold edged,
an old softness returns unseen settling like dust.
lowing moan from witness to a truth born anew
in a stable in bethlehem.

did thunder roll that evening
herald to the event, or was it
silent, just a wind to mix
the smell of fodder and animal and human birth.

was there simple bread and wine
to feed hungry man and mother.
give to the provision of her *******, food to
a helpless salvation.

cold then morning sky returned,
and those that knew came
to see.  saw little more than
a point of growing life,
a light at the end of a long night.

*
the path by which he went is
clay and brick and worn by feet uncounted.
to go that way now is slow work,
for the atmosphere is filled with the cowering of light,
the walls of surrounding buildings covered in dust, defeated.

thin voices rise from the market,
the odors of food and waste and body,
each language foreign as all others,
i would trade my wages to step where god descended thrice,
once of honor
once in body
once to walk in sun bright garden
pray the night,  and retire, leaving us grateful and confused.

forgive me my desire to feel smooth stone
still warm from the day's sun and warm in memory of his foot fall here.
i know what i must and will know,
standing beside him, my face wet with his bleeding.

it doesn’t matter
how hard the wind blows tonight
or how low the clouds
have become.

i have managed to be
merely a spectator,
examining my palms
like the sky's underside.

i follow with my eyes
a single struggling crow
the wind pushing her, she
flies aimless.

does she find home
accidentally where she is
or does she follow like you and i,
streets and paths,
resisting with her voice the blowing,
with her wings the storm crawling over her?


it doesn’t matter
how quiet the evening will become,
or when the ringing
of the great bells commence.

all of this is subject to
a slow meticulous turning.

for i will be
tethered by and
foolish to possession.

and you who possesses me,
will occupy hallways and rooms
and read the epistles
and read the psalter
and turn blue stars
to rigorous mystery,
re-imagined as ****** birth.


it doesn't matter
the thickness of the wall
you are surround by.

they can no more
be penetrated
in neither ease nor ache
then i can pierce the thick
moonless veil of your clothes.

and you who challenged me
to gentleness, will gently slip
out of reach,

and we both know
that the call to vespers will come,
and when it does,
you will send me from you
and i will be like the crow.

you will not be known
for the coins in your pocket
but by the fertility of your garden
planted watered and weeded,
sown by hands that know what it means
to plant seeds.

known for the labor of gathering tools
and brick and mortar
to repair weaknesses in walls
protecting you, your issue,
your garden.

you will be known
for the teaching of children.
small voices understanding
the silence found between
the pencil's tip and the page.
for seeing the vague gray smear,
erasure on paper,
as the beginning of beautiful questions.

for your care as learned and learner.
wishing to meet that which advances towards you,
inexhaustible, examined thoughtfully,
woven within you, as root through loam
undeniable.

known by the blood that you honor and create,
by who you stand with and before,
by the immense luxury of witnessing
growth most vital.

you will not be known
for the coins in your pocket.
coins are numbers likely to be deleted
for the forgiving of the coins,
but for a garden of good and perfect sleep,
as one who tended his delights and his children.

and knowing the forgiveness in their nature,
they will rise despite you,
because of you.

i strain to understand
but love all the more
the hill where the soldiers are buried
within earshot of the steel rails,
the trail to market across the broad
fields of winneshiek’s prairie,
his daily walk now the dusty roads i drive.

tell me stories about a hero's death,
rewarded sleep deep in sacred ground,
and how dying is the easiest of things
for even the faint of heart can be heroric
and i will be as stubborn as a cartridge pouch.

i fail to understand,
calling to mind
past bad predictions of better futures,
cursing and excusing war
and the ancient virtue of how to die.
nobody makes songs of mangled limbs
and expect the young to answer
for that they must sing of glorious sacrifice
to stir the patriot as god's own will.

across the tops of austere military headstone
i look to the north toward the valley of bekaaniba,
as a black sparrow hawk test the thermals
nothing escaping its sharp eye,
nothing that crawls or walks or makes war.

while below in bright afternoon light and easy breeze
surrendering to the smell of earth, farm,
freshly mown grass and hyssop,
i stand to pay homage
and wonder.

i strain to understand
but love them all the more.

i walked the levee that
separated the marsh and the river.

a cold front migrating,
not unpleasant,
clouded dense gray,
hardly a call to the winter that
must follow, rather an invitation.

bands of southward fowl
had settle over night,
the sound of them
carried on the wind,
audible a mile below the ditches
i walked towards.

hoping to list, blue teal, scaup,
mallard, canada, red head
and ring necked,
and not a hundred yards away,
one peregrine over head.

at the sound
of my approach,
unseen below the lip of the levee,
ten thousand birds
of a dozen different stripes
took to flight, heaving to the sky,
as if the earth had exploded before me
and for minutes,
great groups departed noisy,
again and again
until the marsh fell quiet.

and there was little remaining
but scattered feathers
floating on the still waters.