Cud
Cows flank Olema ripples
as Wendell Berry essays
that once enabled faith
in the logic of a flown miss.
Back against the windshield,
settled in ‘til sunset,
the aptness of the metaphor—
of the shine that is what was—
for the irrepressible suddenness
of our legs angled down a slope,
shoulders eskimo kissing, buffets
the vanilla waft
from Maggie Mae’s.
Understory
Why should it be
that wild turkeys roadside,
in light before Bolinas,
command spontaneous rapture?
Barking dogs suggest
it has something to do with how
sea booms along the Point echo
a persistenct indifference
of coastal dins
to human witness.
Would that such resonance—
that our used to be gobbles
could let lungs linger
with the wet dog redwood damp.
Are you going to the market?
An old island song,of sails sunk serenely.
(Yes.)
But she has crossed already.
They are talking girl talk.
It’s like that line about the sun-comprehending glass
there is nothing to look through now
just warmth and the clear.
Except that memory intrudes
with the clutched leg of a young woman in pink pants
her cub abiding in a snapshot.
She added the date on the back in pen.
There was a gist in that slight slant
about monkey faces,
and freezer grapes,
piles of tapered yogurt cups.
when didn’t know about forgetting or compensation.
After all, ice cream cartons and diet Cokes don’t biodegrade.
Yet now with spray hazing four o’clock light
at the end of an Indian summer in Washington Square
nothing remembered.
What was all the fuss?
The best I can do is subsist
in the space among and believe
in even exchange
inside as out
like when something happens with a muscle and the ribs
and the body goes on.
This isn’t like when my first girlfriend
used to re-alive your youth,
as I’m not seeing what was
but will never again be.
I’ve still got bite
So I want to remember a time
when you were happy to take your peace.
Alas, these photons
at this angle
bright that corner,
sad thought unredundant,
recast as renewal.
There are parts of other albums I’ve seen
When she’s got a smile holding her firstborn,
the kind that squeezes shut the eyes.
I hope they didn’t open when I had my heart broken.
For that one,
the time of others always
this is the baptism that whelms:
of raindrops caught on window places
running into each other,
intimating forever,
and a little boy
and her blues
and rapture
among the rivulets
that slow bam trickle
of a moment mirrored all back
all of it
with that I’ve already died for you
and I want to die again
again
and again
love
that this fleeting earworm of a line,
eulogy for my undead mum,
brings to mind
as the sun sets at the edge of a large city
and a youngish man can’t quite grasp the purity
of his bond to a woman that never was.
But the water is not a symbol,
even though it shifts its shape.
And the steel is just steel,
nothing else.
Yes this is the place with the bridge
and water all around.
The pedestal on the other side will age
but not the space around,
just as lightning never leaves a trace
no matter how many pet stores run amok.
That span has quite the view
of nothing that gets old.
Everybody knows this place,
it’s just that there is no x marks the spot,
no red or blue on the bark.
And so a lot of people have never been.
If you have
and you threw rocks
hoping to make the pedestal crumble
you probably still pine.
Even so
there is no carbon-14 of the heart
only crackles that go,
thoughts inside jello matter
that leave no imprint in the banks.
Emotion is a ripple
in that long procession
of life recycling itself.
To gaze within
from that familiar outcrop
just beyond the suspension
where archeologists have no luck
and all of us are always persisting.
Binoculars are the way,
as the wild creatures scare easily
when they go about their business.
Especially that doe,
the one with the funny Latin name,
eternally recurring among the trunks.
Whose hands trace circles on the quiver?
And why must it always be so?
Homo somethings forever look from crossbars
and investigate life through crosshairs
because that is where the old growth stands
and the fawns do not yet fawn.
Wait for it to slumber.
Because you can´t unlisten to one of those voices
that take the best bed
without even asking.
All you can hope to do is draw the blinds tight.
And you can´t ever unknow the labels.
No longer just a leaf,
but a white oak,
instant as dichotomous key
You can
of course
give up the drive to know
but then
for most of us
you just gave up
nearly
everything.
These urges-
Spectrum or dot?
Rainbow or monochrome?
In science, desire is a continuum.
In yoga all is energy and light.
Somehow gammainfraredultravioletmicroradio bits
write the choose your own adventures
so that lust has all the paradoxes
of physical reality.
Dorian Gray is the ur-script of biology
lovers the dependent variable
stowed away
most hope
in a forgotten attic
where thing that could have been
perpetually used to be.
So take what you can
look good
and never get old
even if people you love express their pain
whether or not you like it.
But maybe these are not such bad things,
the wants of nevermore.
Because the visible spectrum always curves away
as eyes cable into
endless impermanent invaginations.
No matter how much you laugh and want
it’s all legs that stand
on ground moving faster than jets.
Those breasts you’d love to nudge
sink into ribs that round lungs
themselves filling with air that moves like scyths,
the direction depending on the hemisphere.
Only at the equator does flow happen in a straight line.
And there is no GPS for that.
So even if we are all particle bound
why deny that wanting wears no veil,
that objects take root?
Like that pretty girl in the cafe with her back to you,
hunched over
crunching numbers.
Or those doves diving across the nave
well above the pews.
Maybe there is a river
and moss
or perhaps ocean fog.
Is this it, a perfect day?
When there will be windows all around
and a large bed-
pillows too,
the kind that don’t hurt the neck.
Such waves that shake a room
That’s how hard they pound the cliff.
Yes: we.
That’s the pronoun couples use
As protectors of some bucolic county.
Outside and slow-
the shadows waking from the trees,
their branches stretched in yawn
as all the stiff bodies limber.
Leaves arch out over water
smell the air, try to hold.
People think the troposphere such a solid thing,
especially in the morning,
while the flora wavers.
All that gas never settles
always to be swirling between this and that.
Something about symbolism and purgatory-
but the thoughts go unresolved.
Orogeny comes to mind
then an image of ocean storms.
Wings make curlicues overhead.
She always puts her hair up after a shower.
Just the towel I think
because I love to watch her dress
I know we will sit side by side when we make it to town
She decides what we will eat along the path
but we look at a menu anyway.
It’s like reading together in bed
before she got engaged
(except the New Yorker has a better font).
I watch her like a sniper
in one of those movies.
Why do I sometimes get like that?
We order food we never tried,
see butterflies and stars.
It gets hot and there is drizzle
and then we taste like salt.
Mediterranean recedes from Siciliy
fills the underworld with crystal;
hours between recast
once resolute solutes.
And never again will such
coastlines persist as anything
but lines on maps
of fairytale kingdoms
that some curious daughter
will some day dust
and exclaim in mock revulsion
”that was the X that marked the spot?”
There’s falling asleep sort of without a shirt then the rush of cold flooring against a too steamy arm plus the cars and neon down below and the shower water followed by fumbling in the near dark leading to lingering, not saying, certainly not leaning in or even out somehow alright on the m60 into the air eventually landing on an almost equator mountain city.
