I have cast these songs as a spell
Against the clarity of faith and doubt
Drafted the lyrics on fog
Or as water freezing on a windshield
Light still coming on through
Not broken but improbable
Temporary refractions where
Nothing’s lost to trust
I have cast these songs as a counterweight
To wings who’d take me from creek wisdom
And these songs I’ve cast like rocks
Through the windows of sunday
Thirty days leave like clouds
over cold jetty stones
The wind blows the massacre over mountains
And the mountains blunted by a billion years
Still shudder and a twist of vultures descends
Through the leftover chasm of last breaths
As if it would corkscrew through the hotel parking lot
The crust of asphalt crumbling like a cork
Down the red earth to the buried creek
But they settle on a pine and resume waiting
For something new to die. Hundreds of pine needles
Drift down like hairs uncounted by God.
As I was walking with the rain along the gutter
Nudging sodden leaves over to clear a way
Or arranging wind-sticks parallel to the stream
To frame water’s efficiency, I heard a thump and saw
November’s angel crouching on the curb.
I ignored him, flicking an oak leaf on its back
To watch it skry the secrets of the surface picking
Up speed but kept him in the corner of my eye
Like you do a wasp off the end of summer’s porch.
His wings were sewn of fallen black walnut twigs
His eyes empty walnut husks his oily tears black
His muddy shield a yard sign for the side that lost
Election, limbs swelling of green willow torn tender by a storm
And twined useless for winter burning. Look I said without looking
Myself at him how the fallen is transfigured into
This slender stream of mourning how every failed
Flight gives it sinew and speed. The angel had a word
But could not with a tongue of apple core spit it out
And I did not want a word with him: still I figured he meant
Well enough though a few of his feet washed away
In the strengthening rain river and I kept to the far side
Of the runoff thinking even God could not cross live water
Without a boat or an invitation or swim lessons at the Y
First: turkey vultures of which there are many in this valley
Won’t eat a living thing and my faith shambling beside me
One wing cocked like a wound’s stitches on the sky still
Had at least a threat or curse left in him but the Black
Vulture will pick at what’s weak and having seen if it puts
Up a fight or bares its belly dig in before the blessing:
The water was a streetside torrent the width of a car tire
And there came a flapping I felt more than heard
And twigs like tiny logs coursed by me in the stream
And the month clicked its beak and pieces of black
Husk I watched slide downstream toward December.
The maple leaves have browned on stems above
A trunk choked with ivy in my neighbor’s yard
The song of the cold wind through the month’s
Last leaves is like running rain then
River galloping over rocks then like burning
Banned books then finally as the song
Of the cold wind harmonizes with ice it’s like tearing
Up the truth (I thought these words
holding my tongue and chattering teeth because
Behind them lay the idea of the May maple
All too ready to spring but I counseled patience
There is no use biting what’s already dead)
While the once weightless brown words dropped
Stone heavy where sleet slept on them and any
Body walking by could hear them
Bounce off the ground like pennies
Outside in the dark there was a picture the shape of a window
Projected on the house next door. Within the frame a slow
Motion dancing of slender orange and shadow
Like plants swaying at the bottom of the ocean.
Still not fully awake, maybe like a deep sea diver gesturing
In slow motion through the stuff of sleep, I got up knowing
The light was a projection from my daughters’ room.
I floated down the hall, my feet were still fins, awareness
Being fed to me by a tank strapped to my back.
I reached the doorway and saw the lamp on fire
Between their beds on the night table. It twisted like
An orange octopus rising up but not moving in the utter
Silence of two girls sleeping without knowledge of
Death. That’s when my mind scrambled onto land.
I woke them and whispered them out of the room
To their mother. Pulled the night table away from the curtain
Kicked the cord from the socket. I froze
Staring at it for a second, still a small thing that
Swerved as if it had a right to exist
And grow to the size of a house.
Then I had a bucket in my hand and
That’s when I drowned it. Then I ran
To the bathroom and filled the bucket again
And a few times more then it was a bucket of black
Smoke and I was standing in water I could hear
Myself cough as if under the surface and my family was on the porch
Below and it was winter and the cold air surged
Up the stairs to the bedroom as I opened the windows
Like a genie ready to grant a wish of burning
Free of form like a color dancing from a magic lamp
On a limited batch of stationery
A Pirie & Sons watermark
Also used for the artist’s
Family correspondence that year
Or in a painting in the painting
Multiple times bare necks black lined
Shadows or pearls or unexplained
Marks across an unconcerned open throat
A shape behind the nude model or sitting
on the bed’s edge as she lay there finished
He knew what the women looked like
Multiple times bare necks black lines
They would stand the victim on a hook
To document the wounds but when they
Could take photos of her on her bed after
All she was unconcerned that she was dead
Scribbles on the wall behind her at the margins
Of the camera’s focus and on the margins of the note
Sharper as the weather was at various hours
A violent spree where the ledger had been
Sketched with bodiless heads.
The person could not be hidden
So she was torn until she was a body
And then torn like a page
Where the ledger had been
Well formed if not elegant.
Which was the titled canvas
And which November’s taunt?
“What a pretty necklace I gave her”
“Am on the trail again”
On Friday I avoid the streets and stores and wait.
For doors to open in the words.
You can’t just force your way in words. The stars
Would feed you to the empty hordes
Of night. Instead I balance on the clock’s
Left hand and hope the day will take its course
And let the minutes devour whoever they stalk.
Some days have guns. And hours enforcing a curfewed
Month’s thoughts. Silence on the phone
Between whatever tone you choose for it
To wake you from your dark jade dream to stone’s
Cold unpolished light. He wouldn’t hit anyone
He can’t enjoy, time. Enjoys the stars
Like fish scattering from the noise.
So, after gratitude: the third part of autumn.
Questions without punctuation
Like love poems which will find answers only
When they reach the wrong person
In another language. Then the late slant
Of sun appears to end a sentence
Without words. No hope of early release.
The moon is balanced on the sky’s highest
Tent pole, just above the bear on the bicycle.
But nobody sees the bicycle. Suddenly
In the night’s back third we’re all up there
Clutching the ring to our parachutes
In the diffident cold, like all the stars
And no less courageous for it, our panic
Making a shape for strangers
Holding hands below.
Late at night, the moon starting over.
Down the stairs the piano shines quietly
Under a stained glass lampshade.
Where leaves and boughs are a single shape
Connecting the trunks which disappear into darkness.
Like music is a single sealed vessel
Coming through the clouds the moon plays its phrase
in a lost key descending the sky’s scales.
Every season is within it: fruit, seed, husk, flower
Forgotten. In the dark mirror on the piano
Beyond the owl’s shadow the edges of sheet
Music shine. Starting over, before I unsnap
The accordion of thanksgiving, I’ll sleep.
Memories of jumping in leaf piles
Are like the action of jumping
Into memory: edged shapes so light
The sharp pleasant scent
Composing myself amid total
Decomposition (meanwhile late
Fall’s upside down spring leaves
Reach the canopy of ground
And ever so slowly begin
The ascension to crown the roots)
Translations from the English 