The Greatest

The music is endless image
of an immeasurably
continual
waterfall, I
always want to walk there,
enter the wild throe of the band
of water, never to hear another
wrench or shriek, but the whir
become roar of cascading the
tumbling, enveloping
downslope.

Alternately, it is the dream
then the waking from dream that
sullies the heart, one cannot forswear
discovered clouds,
not sit a realistic instant
in any fold or furrow
no matter how delightful.

The wind, then, to move the stagnant depression-

times, however, there is not a whisper of breeze
and the trees in duress limp to horrible stone-
the earth sits heavy unto itself.

None can lift the body to ease the grief
hand that would mend
widespread damages
hurt itself.

What humiliation
to lessen the burden,
weight of greatness
acrid, awkward delusion,

that will not bring the body lower than the
ground from which it began to climb
but show an elliptical manner possible
one horizontal,
as in
benignly, to cross the room not to
rake shoulders of the others
with the cleats of boots
nor to uproot the ambitious
saplings crowding, aspiring

but to enter the throes
enter the ragged breaking down,
circumstance in which all
are twofold
swimming, grace incarnate and
a submerged worm drowning.

"Help me down" like she said,
never any better anywhere
but closer to where dirt is made of dirt
to look around from there
around there
the stars, small lights not
swirls aflame that dizzy the charlatan’s eyes
among them without shine or any way to streak
across the sky where one
happily gently
is not a fixture.

(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.

Herons

Sketch: Virginia Marsh


Heron
is eye
presence of
looking not
grace or might
sturdy middle.

Raven-cold
but less darkly
some measure of eagle
humbled

(talons become wind edge
breadth to scale gills or cleave
density, Virginia humidity)

richened thereby
enriched
richer, or
saturated reed
in the water

she
slow to flying
masterful knowing the marsh
and living
amid oblong
perimeters.















Heron

The bleak or
solemn
raven-cold, beam of iron
no-weight
rusted
endurable underneath-
how apply
ponderous human concept
of the ominous
or numinous
to simply the
weird presence
of eyes looking
manifest as body.

Heron.

Some old ditched house
with framed picture
of a gone person
on the mantle inside

it’s Nana Jo is in my mind
not looking at me or anything
always old wife to Bill
she sat in that chair, now

concerted to a stick upright in the marsh
and
into flying a
beard going gray or
a chest breathing sleep







Heron

does not find it funny
prefers the bog to
brown river, exposed to sun,
until blanched and molasses
the snakes are there.

cannot return to that previously happier time
before early afternoons were all
brick smokestacks
covered completely with ivy
in hot, hot,
July.

not a corner or the room but a turning
away from that isolation.

whose body is hardly even there
but lovely manners of blue that
gladden the senses without shame
in front of all the people a quietness
that will move the entire frame into
absence if one of us asked about anything.

a memory from nowhere of a tire rolling maniacally
down the paved hill and into someone’s fence

or back to the river where we went fishing with bread on hooks
for useless sunfish, there was a heron there,

and a few other times, for sure.

possibly if I looked I could recall each one ever seen,
could still turn the head away unnerved but
leave the eyes not fixed following the leaving

there was little to say

Ritual Unhappiness

Stay until
morning
it is day
let us walk
until evening
it is late
let us talk
until
morning.

Parting Words

for Kathy Godfrey

You
were not once one thing
but many interactions
grass
lashed under mud over rock
at the river, or
furrowed shale of oak bark
ribbon of May ivy.

...walking away from me
the pastoral comforts are
piss to the nose? Although
the natural facts of which you are
reflection could fan your fearful leaving
with breeze that lifts ash seed
from dandelion
shuttles dust
toward new fire.

•

You are going to Spain.
I am not going to Spain.
The time is improper. More
I don't have a ticket for the ship.
It's sad? It is then that I am leaving
since I am not leaving.

•

Shapes will not glut
memory, but the odor
of oranges we ate that
afternoon with no
sentimentality as distance
has created, swells, and colorfully
oranges elicit a sense of health,
when peeled the pocks of the rind
spray the joy that groves allow
and inside, cells of fruit
have such fresh wetness
that moistens the dry mind.

I am brushing back the rind
of my hair, and taking a wedge
of memory from the sectioned globe
I see your face's presence and
eating the odor of your laughter
remembered is not sour.

•

Jared and Duncan Dancing

The radical act
is showing the facts
of oneself when
there are others optional
repressive or else
transparently truly
a wish to be free a
circumspect finesse
in the flesh
on one's own bones

Camille

Camille
your ears are
going all over the place,

can you hear that we're
feeling generally better
not unfettered but
as nothing enough
can be held in
that hated way
we’d fallen to.

Camille
my dear me
soft and frightened
we can always and
anywhere again begin
again.

Boundaries

Land’s cove
crumbs of stone
lines from the
landing

trace perimeter

Surroundings
of water
define the
water, specify
the water.

Cup on the table
a lake down the way
edges are the fences
from which names
arise, define the manner

of drinking
of fording
of wading
of swimming
or drowning

for lack of attention
to shore’s definition.

Driving with Duncan

His elastic mind
truly proposes a way

to go is
circular
circuitous

gently,
as a tree’s
aging spins a
round line

outward
outward

ripples etched
coming centrally

and this is our progression.

News

I can still see
us you and
me on Eddy St.

away from the
river
drinking
drinking
that insipid
lemonade.

Pigeon with Broken Foot

We’re not doing well
having, formerly,
free of mar
flown,
landed—
press press
contacting pavement,
slight hustle
quick to
again to
flight.

Now: poverty,
maimed while requiring
strength, as all the time.

The others,
no scathes
chase us,
and they are despicable
fucks
harrowing the damaged
which in the them, latent
too will wreck.

Sketch: Tennessee Dawn

hanging over
the Holston

moon
still there
at dawn
after
evening
dawn
tucked in
mountains

over the Holston
River

Sketch: Haywood St.(Then Shall Break)

Elm trees
widows of
elm leaves

I cannot now remember
how earlier in the year
this street appeared

when a marriage held
together—bough to bud,
blooms, show of natural

actual togetherness then.
Separate, we separate
only from an old formation.

“And then shall your light...
“And then shall your light...
“And then shall your light...
“And then shall your light...

“break.”

Ah, Sam

take the carried foods.
eat the carried foods.
canteen, burlap, prickles…
me suddenly become
cowboy type
can grin despite
there’s no cows
spurs, other regalia,
even a horse at all—
except by a measurement
inclusive of ache,
the distance and span
of the trip made
to disperse or
accept through use
the lonesome ember.

Cardinals

Should you, waking,
sweater on and in socks
at the sink for water
see a cardinal in snowed

bush, you live in Carolina.
The fortune is fact
of residence—attention
occurring, unfocused.

You want to be some
brightness in thickets
and you are red, red
cardinal.

Anything remaining
in there, thicket of
twig poplar, business
fences, flecking of

snow, smear from
wiped fog on glass?
The red, crimson
cannot be affected,

or dyed in.
Character,
purest function
impels one to be

black and red
brindle-beaked,
sit among pallor,
berry of a holly tree.

Personism

Nana Mary
can I carry
the apples

single ones ripe
too much or pale
they’ll turn, will
turn.

It’s you now

or not at all

because it’s us!

The Demons

Needles in the water
or a path of rough dirt
in the mind, hewn
to a vacant swath
where droves of mites
panic amid shard-ground

that the flesh of hands
asking dirt to smooth
grate to a stubble bleeding
more mites that gnaw
until body and ground
sift indiscriminate
and the afternoon seems
very long.

Must be True

Indoors, some unattended
place to kneel moan or ask,

Deleuth, or Topeka, Brockton,
Missoula, Tacoma, Plymouth,

an ample organ brays.
I hope it will stop soon.

“M”

for Brandon Shimoda

When place occurs,
belief sleeps,
knowledgeable.
Choice followed
or fought afeared
properly sets one
on a stool
in Montana.

Yes, a ragged seat,
under a roof,
talk, then music,
furnishings,
drink’s ice tart
noticed in that
very order.

Plainly, to tell full—
dreams, although revelatory
populated similarly odorous,
transpire by particular
breathing, drool,
moves among blankets

sedentary. Then,
awoken, expiration—
a hill top, suddenly,

not the room remembered,
various dear pursuits wanted
for eternal engagement, but

“all of Missoula” spread
ahead; not expected,
therefore entrusted

with the failure
actualized, premonitions
shuttled down and

down
phrased differently is
an end to what could
but will not eventually

quilt this as hoped.
Admire the corpse.
The worst turns.
Eyes from sleep pried

separate one torn
and another torn,
leaving these tassels,
lashes to comb they
keep the dust from.

Wind increases, movement also
follows and when less the moving
does too, peaked or on the ground.

For Jim

The perennial search for pulse,
at the bonepile, in the boneyard
or when Spring fleshed green the fields
ever spread for walking—have we softened,

to leave them to grow untrodden,
tiring entirely of tiredness that we
succumbing to rest may have lost a
glow once occurred in the marrow.

No. There is no loss that does not get,
nor have we ceased our looking, or lost
at all. Our company with one another
less than our mythology of friendship

of brotherhood carried now as one would
childhood, or, later, youth and young life.
Nonetheless, you are my friend and I will
always need water from the well of that sense,

beyond circumstance, or distance, or living
in the same town without a word for months!
There are many around, Jim, but few within.
Come any Siberia, the bones remain integral.

Your music, or speech, or loves, your learning
and going away, there is situation inside you
for all there’s to do. The “grand expansion” is a
turn of the head, to see friends there, me among

in clouds or mire or the same trite continuation
of life. There is ever a color to find in the wood
that found increases the variegation of the eye.
Again, as ever, forever, do not stop the looking.

Muggy

Your eyes do not
alter,
stones over which
passes the water.

Lashes, bank-side
grasses,
comb motes from
blinks of winds.

And by your nose's
bridge,
mark of a step of a
vision that entered in,

passed through the
water,
silt on the stone,
that softens the stone.

Backgammon with Elyse

Pick up your
dice

so
I can
go

Movements / Mathematical

Though the falling,
a wandering, unplanned
as our meeting, friend,
position, gladly taken

there is only chance
for another
that did not
happen.

Your folk etiquette
bless it, and you your
deftly made mobiles
draped on a rafter of

an absurdly classic Southern
back-porch. Also your sense of
words, as fabric worn by you,
colored, and succumbing to wind.

Some hay in your backyard
tussled, loosed from the bale
and helping yourself you help
one so untrained at the game.

Swagger of your
laughter, it is not
pride but dignity
a theater of joy

asserted, softly
as cotton blooms
in your Alabama
clouds of earth.

Swim, Colleen

swim
Colleen
the water
sky to move
within Colleen
swim your lungs clean
breathe Colleen
pulling arm and arm and
waving hands finned
swim Colleen
there is enough for you
constant giving
Colleen.

swim
Colleen
Colleen
swim
Colleen
Colleen
swim
Colleen
Colleen
swim

swim

swim

swim


like you used to.

in Sharon Lake.

Makes a Bird

Wind in a holly berry
makes a bird conceal.

We'd seen one another
seeing one, an other.

First, wind moves, then
holly berry, move, Raven

old leaf shuttling in
with air still now you're here.

Wind in any company
often confuses sociality.