Monday, August 14, 2006

(in Vermont)

VT

Round cap silos
complete the picture
of cows in a swamp.
roads made lanes by
trim of elms and pines.

Whole lots of grass for sale,
bare opportunity for corn
or a bunch of old trucks
and scrapwood.

Endless facets for looking
or to not even care.

°
The pitch in Sugar Maples
isn't syrup until it's boiled.
Other trees are not unprepared
firewood. Nor the classic
red barns. They are not image.
They contain hay. In bails.
Stacked. If you entered one
through the massive doors
you'd want to sneeze the
July sun has so dried further
the bundles of thatch.

Finally, who the hell
would want to go to the
gazebo in downtown
Rutland who wasn’t
there already, on the
shady grass of the time-honored
town commons having whatever
rural fun with ice cream and music,
someone's grandparents, paying
attention to fiddles and washboards, not
really wanting anything, some pancakes
for breakfast, with proverbial syrup, at the
table, in the house beside the red barn that
as they watched caved in on itself, was empty
of hay, or anything at all...



Bailey


Her death
is not confusing .
We’ve all a road
allotted, and much
to hit in deviating.
It was here, her. Her.
The coldness nears a
little more. We who
knew her know she is
purely fine, wherever
and still want again to
see her.

At her funeral
on Lake Champlain
her grandmother's
lush estate of a small
white brick cottage with
plots of flowers throughout
there were more than 100
mourning, part of the ceremony
that changes no fact of her going
but the mind for which it exists
irreparable. The "Native American"
style service prompted we all bundle
tobacco in pieces of cloth, imbue our
specific blessings, remembrances, to
at last burn the gathered bundles
watch the smoke as ghost of
what we had to say. I was somehow
picked to collect the objects into a large
basket, walking around the half-circle,
accepting the somewhat "last word" of
Bailey’s family, friends, people from her
town. We all knew what to do? Say? This
is what happens? Has happened.

Remembering her bizarre mendacity
a sense of melodrama she wouldn’t shake,
talking about skiing or drugs, it was hard
to believe, though her voice tried audibly
I now recognize simply to be accepted. I
shared with her a stupid passion for anything
that ultimately embarrassed but, even slightly older
has tempered, slows to be vague propulsion
for inevitable focuses. I hadn’t seen her in years
and if I saw her in downtown Boston instead of
as a concept of a person, cremated, physically no where
on the entire earth, I’d have said hello. Talked a minute.
And that would have been that. And still would be.
No chance. The common is sacred-all is common
the sacred is the common, while it’s possible.







New England



Rhythm of breath
blood happening through
and into and away from
the heart. Old place
I always am, always
leaving, it's here to
meet in coming, fabric
on the back. Fits. I fit it.




Vermont

Way of sun
upon forest crests
towns within, spike
gently, with slants
joined to slants
roads throughout make
moveable circumstance
signs define the way to go
a way to get around.





Steady


Hold with no holding
to the line that's there—
hold to it, tack the sail
in wind—

or a marsh
to the perimeters, scrub
trees, snags,
to live in.



Love You

for what else do
alone? Face life
indifferently, be
afraid of pain, or
at last suffer the
lack of company
thins the air by the day
more and toward harder
form. One can always
"get by," but why
with something possible
otherwise, someone with
whom to talk about talking
or how best make breath of air.

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