I took a photo seven times —
A thick grove of dark spindly trees
Backed by a bright December sun —
And a small turquoise dot shines
In each — the camera lens sees
Images where I think are none.
I continued my walk by a pond,
Looking for mink and waterfowl.
Hawks circled each other beyond,
Their screeches in the wind a howl.
From deep hoof prints I knew a deer
Had trod this path, now nowhere near.
I stared at the sun — a blinked tear
Painted the trees with a blue smear.
There is so little that is right here,
I might suspect there’s nothing more.
Everything grows within the sphere
Of my eye — ocean crashing shore.
What’s far is near, what’s then is now,
Eating a pear is taking a vow.
Can I leave it at that, the I
Looking through the window at trees,
And nail thunderclouds to the sky
With a hundred thousand me’s?
Ego was never so rewarded
Choosing to lose what it’s hoarded.
Some say there is nothing beyond,
Ignoring our interstitial bond.
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.
