Eve listened to her heart and sinned,
Then passed out of paradise
Into paradise, clothed in wind,
Her mind unclouded as her eyes.
She found her husband hiding
Behind trees — he found her blinding.
They found each other in their arms
And recited a litany of charms.
They knew this world was not broken
And stood awaiting the awoken
Moment of their forgiveness.
Distant laughter beckoned them on.
As they walked beneath the midday sun,
The wind billowed her white silk dress.
Some think trees know each other
As an unborn child knows its mother,
A receptivity to stasis and change,
Which continually rearrange
The molecules of a kind of mind
As they perpetually unwind.
“Some think” has become all
That’s left of the old universal.
I wrote this about my trip from Colorado Spring to Fort Wayne in 1985. It seems an apt metaphor today for turning 70.
I-70
Chasing Kansas twisters, I interrupt
The moon floating above a thunderhead,
God pondering his coffee cup.
The locust lullaby in the trees
Is a song to stars, or to the dead:
Fireflies flash where I cannot see.
Above the hood, the shuffling storm
Is a man on his knees, fist shaking,
Roaring for his shattered arm.
Behind, the sky is empty and clear.
The earth recedes quickly, quivering:
Ground heat cracks the icy air.
The path into these woods begins
With tentative steps on bent grass
Widening for two to walk abreast.
The locomotives’ blaring tocsins
Grow infrequent as the years pass.
Few paths reach a place unaddressed,
Though many have been abandoned.
(Van Gogh’s led into wheat fields
Where all men’s souls are pardoned
With the harvest’s generous yields.)
It’s hard to walk on railroad ties,
The first too close, the second too far.
I walk into woods, perhaps in error,
On a path that offers no alibis.
The tiger swallowtail settled
In our Gomphrena Fireworks
Yesterday afternoon sipping
From dozens of pink blooms.
It became crazily nettled
And flew in wild fits and jerks
When a spicebush swallowtail, tipping
Its wings among the blossoms,
Exiled the tiger from its lair.
The wind pushed black wings apart
So wide they ceased to be a pair,
But held fast until the gust died.
The tiger landed like a dart,
But, like the wind, was again denied.
If the end doesn’t end, what then?
This moment is already contingent.
I dare you to count from one to ten,
To ignore a found dime, even a cent.
Each moment just comes back to us
Like the wind in the tree’s susurrous.
We’ve never been here before to be?
Yesterday and tomorrow are empty.
If I walk around the block every day
The houses never look the same,
Flowers grow and trees disappear,
The sidewalk means don’t lose your way,
Signs say don’t misremember your name,
But nothing guarantees that I am here.
Nature knows few right angles.
Man tends to abjure the curved.
Last night the moon swerved
To miss a cloud. The sun dangles.
The old white oak blown down,
Scattered its broken branches.
The wind passed on without a sound
In invisible avalanches.
Some windows are an open cage
Door with nothing inside to show.
Some walls mimic an empty page —
One’s painted with a golden elbow.
We know nothing we don’t realize
With or without our golden eyes.
