spoke
J. F. Kennedy after
the Bay of Pigs
To stand up
black-marked tulip
not snapped by the storm
“I've been duped by the experts”
—and walk
the South Lawn
Mergansers
fans
on their heads
Thoughts on things
fold unfold
above the river beds
“Shelter”
Holed damp
cellar-black beyond
the main atrocities
my sense of property's
adrift
Not burned we sweat—
we sink to water Death
(your hand!—
this was land)
disowns
WINTERGREEN RIDGE
Where the arrows
of the road signs
lead us:
Life is natural
in the evolution
of matter
Nothing supra-rock
about it
simply
butterflies
are quicker
than rock
Man
lives hard
on this stone perch
by sea
imagines
durable works
in creation here
as in the center
of the world
let's say
of art
We climb
the limestone cliffs
my skirt dragging
an inch below
the knee
the style before
the last
the last the least
to see
Norway
or “half of Sussex
and almost all
of Surrey”
Crete perhaps
and further:
“Every creature
better alive
than dead,
men and moose
and pine trees”
We are gawks
lusting
after wild orchids
Wait! What's this?—
sign:
Flowers
loveliest
where they grow
Love them enjoy them
and leave them so
Let's go!
Evolution's wild ones
saved
continuous life
through change
from Time Began
Northland's
unpainted barns
fish and boats
now this—
flowering ridge
the second one back
from the lighthouse
Who saved it?—
Women
of good wild stock
stood stolid
before machines
They stopped bulldozers
cold
We want it for all time
they said
and here it is—
horsetails
club mosses
stayed alive
after dinosaurs
died
Found:
laurel in muskeg
Linnaeus' twinflower
Andromeda
Cisandra of the bog
pearl-flowered
Lady's tresses
insect-eating
pitcher plant
Bedeviled little Drosera
of the sundews
deadly
in sphagnum moss
sticks out its sticky
(Darwin tested)
tentacled leaf
towards a fly
half an inch away
engulfs it
Just the touch
of a gnat on a filament
stimulates leaf-plasma
secretes a sticky
clear liquid
the better to eat you
my dear
digests cartilage
and tooth enamel
(DHL spoke of blood
in a green growing thing
in Italy was it?)
They do it with glue
these plants
Lady's slipper's glue
and electric threads
smack the sweets-seeker
on the head
with pollinia
The bee
befuddled
the door behind him
closed he must
go out at the rear
the load on him
for the next
flower
Women saved
a pretty thing: Truth:
“a good to the heart”
It all comes down
to the family
“We have a lovely
finite parentage
mineral
vegetable
animal”
Nearby dark wood—
I suddenly heard
the cry
my mother's
where the light
pissed past
the pistillate cone
how she loved
closed gentians
she herself
so closed
and in this to us peace
the stabbing
pen
friend did it
close to the heart
pierced the woods
red
(autumn?)
Sometimes it's a pleasure
to grieve
or dump
the leaves most brilliant
as do trees
when they've no need
of an overload
of cellulose
for a cool while
Nobody, nothing
ever gave me
greater thing
than time
unless light
and silence
which if intense
makes sound
Unaffected
by man
thin to nothing lichens
grind with their acid
granite to sand
These may survive
the grand blow-up
the bomb
When visited
by the poet
From Newcastle on Tyne
I neglected to ask
what wild plants
have you there
how dark
how inconsiderate
of me
Well I see at this point
no pelting of police
with flowers
no uprooted gaywings
bishop's cup
white bunchberry
under aspens
pipsissewa
(wintergreen)
grass of parnassus
See beyond—
ferns
algae
water lilies
Scent
the simple
the perfect
order
of that flower
water lily
I see no space-rocket
launched here
no mind-changing
acids eaten
one sort manufactured
as easily as gin
in a bathtub
Do feel however
in liver and head
as we drive
towards cities
the change
in church architecture—
now it's either a hood
for a roof
pulled down to the ground
and below
or a factory-long body
crawled out from a rise
of black dinosaur-necked
blower-beaked
smokestack-
steeple
Murder in the Cathedral's
proportions
Do we go to church
No use
discuss
ing heaven
HJ's father long ago
pronounced human affairs
gone to hell
Great God—
what men desire!—
the scientist: a full set
of fishes
the desire to know
Another: to talk beat
act cool
release la'go
So far out of flowers
human parts found
wrapped in newspaper
left at the church
near College Avenue
More news: the war
which “cannot be stopped”
ragweed pollen
sneezeweed
whose other name
Ambrosia
goes for a community
Ahead—home town
second shift steamfitter
ran arms out
as tho to fly
dived to concrete
from loading dock
lost his head
Pigeons
(I miss the gulls)
mourn the loss
of people
no wild bird does
It rained
mud squash
willow leaves
in the eaves
Old sunflower
you bowed
to no one
but Great Storm
of Equinox
1968–1970
PAEAN TO PLACE
And the place
was water
Fish
fowl
flood
Water lily mud
My life
in the leaves and on water
My mother and I
born
in swale and swamp and sworn
to water
My father
thru marsh fog
sculled down
from high ground
saw her face
at the organ
bore the weight of lake water
and the cold—
he seined for carp to be sold
that their daughter
might go high
on land
to learn
Saw his wife turn
deaf
and away
She
who knew boats
and ropes
no longer played
She helped him string out nets
for tarring
And she could shoot
He was cool
to the man
who stole his minnows
by night and next day offered
to sell them back
He brought in a sack
of dandelion greens
if no flood
No oranges—none at hand
No marsh marigolds
where the water rose
He kept us afloat
I mourn her not hearing canvasbacks
their blast-off rise
from the water
Not hearing sora
rails's sweet
spoon-tapped waterglass-
descending scale-
tear-drop-tittle
Did she giggle
as a girl?
His skiff skimmed
the coiled celery now gone
from these streams
due to carp
He knew duckweed
fall-migrates
toward Mud Lake bottom
Knew what lay
under leaf decay
and on pickerel weeds
before summer hum
To be counted on:
new leaves
new dead
leaves
He could not
—like water bugs—
stride surface tension
He netted
loneliness
As to his bright new car
my mother—her house
next his—averred:
A hummingbird
can't haul
Anchored here
in the rise and sink
of life—
middle years' nights
he sat
beside his shoes
rocking his chair
Roped not “looped
in the loop
of her hair”
I grew in green
slide and slant
of shore and shade
Child-time—wade
thru weeds
Maples to swing from
Pewee-glissando
sublime
slime-
song
Grew riding the river
Books
at home-pier
Shelley could steer
as he read
I was the solitary plover
a pencil
for a wing-bone
From the secret notes
I must tilt
upon the pressure
execute and adjust
In us sea-air rhythm
“We live by the urgent wave
of the verse”
Seven year molt
for the solitary bird
and so young
Seven years the one
dress
for town once a week
One for home
faded blue-striped
as she piped
her cry
Dancing grounds
my people had none
woodcocks had—
backland-
air around
Solemnities
such as what flower
to take
to grandfather's grave
unless
water lilies—
he who'd bowed his head
to grass as he mowed
Iris now grows
on fill
for the two
and for him
where they lie
How much less am I
in the dark than they?
Effort lay in us
before religions
at pond bottom
All things move toward
the light
except those
that freely work down
to oceans' black depths
In us an impulse tests
the unknown
River rising—flood
Now melt and leave home
Return—broom wet
naturally wet
Under
soak-heavy rug
water bugs hatched—
no snake in the house
Where were they?—
she
who knew how to clean up
after floods
he who bailed boats, houses
Water endows us
with buckled floors
You with sea water running
in your veins sit down in water
Expect the long-stemmed blue
speedwell to renew
itself
O my floating life
Do not save love
for things
Throw things
to the flood
ruined
by the flood
Leave the new unbought—
all one in the end—
water
I possessed
the high word:
The boy my friend
played his violin
in the great hall
On this stream
my moonnight memory
washed of hardships
maneuvers barges
thru the mouth
of the river
They fished in beauty
It was not always so
In Fishes
red Mars
rising
rides the sloughs and sluices
of my mind
with the persons
on the edge
Alliance
Hunger
&nb
sp; with wonder
Mites wintering
in rabbits' ears
Pronuba
with yucca
Bash's
backwater
moon-pull
He was full
at the port
of Tsuruga
Bash
beholds the moon
in the water
He is full
at the port
of Tsuruga
The man of law
on the uses
of grief
The poet
on the law
of the oak leaf
Not all harsh sounds displease—
Yellowhead blackbirds cough
through reeds and fronds
as through pronged bronze
JEFFERSON AND ADAMS
1
Jefferson: I was confident
the French Revolution would end well
Adams differed: What is freedom
to their thousands upon thousands
who cannot read or write—
impracticable as for the Elephants Lions
Tigers Panthers Wolves and Bears
in the Royal Menagerie of Versailles
Our minister at Paris: Lafayette
gave dinner at my house ten days before
the fall of the Bastille
The argument at table disfigured
by no tinsel—cool
as Xenophon Plato Cicero
2
Adams to the unexploding projectile
from the forest of Virginia: Where was you—
Jefferson said Dear friend, I was Stoic-trained
but longed for Tranquility—
Monticello, Horace, Epicurus
I value the passions
(the senses stimulate the mind)
though yours drew you away from me
Friend Acrid to his friend Jefferson:
—no doubt you was fast asleep
in philosophical Tranquility
when ten thousand People paraded
the streets of Philadelphia
Katharine Anne
A poor poet
divining Gail
The baby looked toward me
and I was born—
to sound, light
lift, life
beyond my life
She wiggles her toe
I grow
I go to school to her
and she to me
and to Bonnie
War
The trees full of snipers, the new kind
of bird
Men on the hunt for Russian furs
for Ukrainian sausage
and Chinese girls
They floated past a crescent moon
to Sicily—
strings of diminished pearls
In each pearl-parachute
a tommy gun
The Russian—only a man from Georgia
USSR
could dance like that
My baby son?—in some
secret zone
Harpsichord & Salt Fish
THOMAS JEFFERSON
I
My wife is ill!
Collecte Works Page 12
