2.
Each time I clear the fence of another day
I am trespassing onto the future’s yard
Like the deer behind the house
alarmed to find open space by the trees leaping
fence after fence and just as quickly gone
[4.14.15]
1.
Spring storms roam across the valley.
On the maple, leaves appear like gypsy tents.
Wind off the mountainside ruffles the green edges:
inside one of the leaves sits a woman at a fortune telling table
laying the lone card of summer face-down.
Old pine tree seems the only one
excited by the first warm wind
Empty-handed, the others barely nod
at his hundred foot tall child’s soul
Who remembers the world with no flowers
no leaves no bees who knows
What was and knows what’s coming
Somewhere between the tired moon’s glow and my unfocused eyes
I keep seeing winter—snow heaps when it’s just a white van
Across the street; accumulation on the metal roof next door
instead of the bored shine of a lazy evening rain. Tomorrow
It’s spring, I know, and the rain outside should sound less
like ice and more like the first words of flowers and grass.
Wife! every night you cradle your guitar for an hour and put the spirits
in harmony. Come over here and pick me up! And put me back in tune.
After a light overnight snow grounded things stand out
like a character for winter
autumn’s fallen sticks seem arranged
a gentle alphabet of dropped and windblown things
are all alphabets constructed of things that no longer grow
snapped or broken things until the world made sense of the drift
do I know as I look down on them they are looking
past me pointing to all that is still living above our heads
to all that will be green again whether I look or not
are all languages a message in relief or is it my own relief
that words will never be in season the spring they sprouted
from long gone the spring yet to arrive as forgetful
as we are with each other with growing and shedding
that even my name is an accidental landing
Wherever you hide from the rain becomes the rain’s instrument
the roof over your head tin or tar the glass and metal casing of cars
and every room in the house has its own sound of soaking wet
Earlier today the instrument was me at first the sound of a dry being
surprised by downpour and seconds later was already the sound
of saturated work clothes and splat of drops on hair as wet
as it could get: I love these sounds but I’ve had enough
Tomorrow I’m going out to listen for the sound of things drying
In the foothills by the one road
leading up a mockingbird leaps
into shortlived flight from grass to low
branches: on its fully extended wings
the white wing markings meet
into a lowercase “o” which is
the foothills’ song: quiet
unmarked and not to be mocked
All at once dogs and children roam in friendly agitation
where yesterday they stuck to the plowed paths
They climb the mountain of last week’s snow pushed to the roadside
Its ten thousand questions answered
by the lengthening silence of the afternoon
I feel like calling you every hour just to say nothing special
With thunder and warm wind spring starts to shoulder winter aside
Under sky’s sharp azure stone a jeweled cloud leapfrogs mountain
Translations from the English 