One hundred and one years ago
He diagnosed our vertigo.
His scalpel cut beneath the skin
And removed original sin.
He held it in his palsied hands —
The nothing he left on Margate Sands.
It’s only gotten worse since then —
The commandments are ten times ten.
Dust is fear and the unreal real.
Now it’s not what you think, but feel.
A cacophony of voices
Warns us to forget all choices.
As night falls a whimpered prayer
Leaves the nervous chanting sayer.
The faintest chitter of leaves in the Fall,
The slant auroras beneath the branches,
The blue-gray clouds that are not clouds at all,
But cloudless sky the fading light blanches,
The warmth and the chill I feel on my cheeks
As sunned and unsunned breezes alternate,
Each gust not finding what the other seeks,
And not one beast reaching out to a mate.
Today I walk this ordered avenue
Until the moon tops the furthest poplar.
It's so bright I can't see a single star,
A Milky Way I cannot know, but knew.
I reach home as the shadows slip away.
Only the moon's been moved enough to stay.
There’s no edge to the pine forest.
We’re always within and without.
It’s neither a question nor test,
Because there’s no room here for doubt.
Its mixed scents purify the air
And its shades rarify the light.
I decide to touch each column,
Which soon urges me toward despair,
As though mine is a hand of blight
That renders the living bark numb.
Without navigable details,
One can get lost in woods — not these,
Whose needled floors delimit trails
Some, not all, follow with ease.
They pierce a clear blue sky
And tear it to tatters.
Blind or with open eyes,
If I know what matters,
I can thrust my fingers
In and leave blood and flesh.
Yet starlings can linger,
Safe in its lethal mesh.
The question is why thorns?
They can protect a rose.
The bull charges its horns.
But why such a tree grows
Long and fearsome spindles
Pierces us with symbols.
A dreamed-of tern feathered bright tin,
With feet of forks and spoons, and eyes
Of rapidly blinking buttons
Flapping in a nacreous sky . . .
So briefly, yet half-remembered.
Is it different than sand hill cranes
Flying tight skeins, or tiny birds
Fighting at your feeder, insane,
Almost: hungry, or is it greed?
All is constructed by what feeds
The integers of counting we’s,
Assembled — one, one — instantly,
As we try to comprehend dreams —
And all else— as more than just seen.
How many remember so much?
I’ve read for some it’s a burden,
That not a thought or word or touch
Is lost, faded or uncertain.
All comes back clear and unbidden,
A constant stream of images
It is prayed might remain hidden.
No, such a past never ages.
The old yew tree in my back yard,
Subsiding, has dug a sinkhole,
Its roots drawing earth to branches.
I fill it in with sand —it’s hard—
I don’t want to choke the tree’s bole
Just to slow small avalanches.
