Now we enter the season of our age
before summer’s end yellow leaves drift
haze floats between us and the foothills
still the sun is strong the rain when it comes
like the same words over and over
is not yet cold and when I look
between birds and hills I see the past
and am reminded of the future
I just spoke to the miles
they have no intention
of coming between us
but cannot get out of
the way so I looked up
the towers of clocks could
count the ways to keep us
together but not give back
even a moment spent
without you so I tried
boxing the yearbooks folded
the distance into my back
pocket even the intentions
bad and good wanted to help
but could not make up their minds
so I asked sleep sleep forgave me
I’m not sure for what but having
removed it all walked with you
wide awake beneath swallows and oak
humming these lines as I forget them
Does the insect know he has a shadow
or what it is cast from
When he moves from lamplight
and the moon cannot remember him
behind the scrim of rain and the shadow drifts
into illegibility does it add its unknowing
to the black page these lines are my shadow
are what the moon remembers
Smaller than a pen’s
mistake on paper
misplaced dosh
over the letter next
to the i are the wings
of the small insect
opening and closing at the
center of this thought
Remnants of clouds
wasps hovering over the hollows
The storm a black wall in the sky
a father turning his back
cars break the quiet
thoughts attending their own wake
and now you
are you you or what you mean
In the dream the same beach
we’ve never been to together
is calling though once we stood
on a jetty watching the sun
read the gathering clouds
the riot act sometimes you have
to lower yourself as well to circumstances
to rise some place else entirely
*
The waves here
slide across and beneath
each moment grand tectonics
some brought to level
annihilation by incremental loss
some subsumed by a surge
of gain so that what they’ve gained
gains them in final shape
Waves crash—a murmur
in the moon’s ear—still asking
who is pulling whom
We came here to the summer
it is a place like life is a place
On time’s window we are open and still
everything you want to say
But every time you look we are different
if you want us to survive you must
Stop glowing so we can find
our own way to the one you love
Shadows on the sidewalk of leaves in motion
above me are like the shadows of flames
the leaves are burning but the burn is slower it is a burn
we can inhabit or control are the leaves our days
how can we see it in the leaves still green and flexible
how can we see the beginning and end of it all in the shadows
how does the time difference work is it the same
when I send out words to you here in my midsummer
why do I feel the entirety of me burning
The abandoned asylum. The shell of a house next door
like the edge of some stranger’s attention span
you’re drawn to it because they’re gone, they gave up
without knowing that even in their judgment
even when they have turned their back things are
growing green spreading out in abandonment
*
building their own context indifferent to circumstance
with regard only for their new shape just as
I am spreading roots in the airy spaces between your words
to build for you a new and pleasing shape
Others may not notice it but it will last
that may be why it will last just
*
as words are an abandoned structure
as soon as they are uttered they are left vacant
Who will come fill them in live in them will you
be with me in all this space left by others
Can we make a home with quiet abandon
past the edge of even our own attention
Past the edge of what we think we want
Translations from the English 