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is a meadow after a snowfall that a poem hopes to cross

You wouldn't have believed it, how the man, a little touched perhaps, set his hands together and prayed for happiness, yet not his own; he meant his people, by which he meant not people really, but trees and cows, the dirty horses, dogs, the fox who lived at the back of his place with her kits, and the very night who settled down to rock his place to sleep, the place he tried so hard to tend he found he mended fences in his sleep. He said to the you above, who, let's be honest, doesn't say too much, I need you now up there to give my people happiness, you let them smile and know the reason; hear my prayer, Old Yam. The you who's you might laugh at that, and I agree, it's funny to make a prayer like that, the down-home words and yonder reach of what he said; and calling God the Elder Sweet Potato, shucks, that's pretty funny, and kind of sad.

The holes have almost left the sky and the blanks the paths—the patches next to natural, corroborated by the incidental sounds of practical activities and crows, themselves exhibiting many of the earmarks of the actual. This must have happened many times before, we must suppose. Almost a pulse if we could speed it up: the repeated seeking of our several senses toward each other, fibers trying to reach across the gap as fast as possible, following a blast.

The little girl won’t eat her sandwich; she lifts the bun and looks in, but the grey beef coated with relish is always there. Her mother says, “Do it for mother.” Milk and relish and a hard bun that comes off like a hat—a kid’s life is a cinch. And a mother’s life? “What can you do with a man like that?” she asks the sleeping cook and then the old Negro who won’t sit. “He’s been out all night trying to get it. I hope he gets it. What did he ever do but get it?” The Negro doesn’t look, though he looks like he’s been out all night trying. Everyone’s been out all night trying. Why else would we be drinking beer at attention? If she were younger, or if I were Prince Valiant, I would say that fate brought me here to quiet the crying, to sweeten the sandwich of the child, to waken the cook, to stop the Negro from bearing witness to the world. The dawn still hasn’t come, and now we hear the 8 o’clock whistles blasting from heaven, and with no morning the day is sold.

we were riding out to an abandoned farmhouse on his pearl black Triumph deaf to the sound of bleating sheep that was when he told me it was the same model James Dean had swapped for three days after they’d finished filming East of Eden I tried to tell him that was cool but he didn’t act like he’d heard me so I hugged him tight and set my head on his shoulder and watched how the yellow moon was shifting behind the pines like the face of a jailbird he’d told me before that his wife knew he didn’t swing her way but she was keeping quiet about it for their kid’s sake we rumbled into the dry grass and started cutting through the cornstalks into a big clearing where he kicked the bike stand and told me to get off he tossed his chrome aviators and then we started our hike to the farmhouse which was sagging in the field opposite of us we were quiet on the way like a couple of thieves about to rob someone blind I stood back as he tore a warped door off the barn and flung it into the gravel inside the air was dusty and thick and the moon was still with us cocked behind a streaked window like we’d traded places and now we were the jailbirds serving a lifetime sentence without parole John pulled off his steel-toe boots and told me to wait for him up in the hayloft I left my loafers there and climbed a wood ladder until I was looking into the eyes of a great horned owl he kept shaking his head like he couldn’t believe what was about to happen I was going to be John’s first but while I was gathering the wet straw I smelled smoke and slid back down the ladder that was when I saw the fire licking the crossbeams and ran outside John was passing through the wheat like a final judgment his figure was muscled with flame and I kept silent as he reached for a head of grain and burned it to the ground

Dear love, where the red lillies blossomed and grew, The white snows are falling; And all through the wood, where I wandered with you, The loud winds are calling; And the robin that piped to us tune upon tune, Neath the elm—you remember, Over tree-top and mountain has followed the June, And left us—December. Has left, like a friend that is true in the sun, And false in the shadows. He has found new delights, in the land where he's gone, Greener woodlands and meadows. What care we? let him go! let the snow shroud the lea, Let it drift on the heather! We can sing through it all; I have you—you have me, And we’ll laugh at the weather. The old year may die, and a new one be born That is bleaker and colder; But it cannot dismay us; we dare it—we scorn, For love makes us bolder. Ah Robin! sing loud on the far-distant lea, Thou friend in fair weather; But here is a song sung, that’s fuller of glee, By two warm hearts together.

Summer for prose and lemons, for nakedness and languor, for the eternal idleness of the imagined return, for rare flutes and bare feet, and the August bedroom of tangled sheets and the Sunday salt, ah violin! When I press summer dusks together, it is a month of street accordions and sprinklers laying the dust, small shadows running from me. It is music opening and closing,Italia mia, on Bleecker, ciao, Antonio, and the water-cries of children tearing the rose-coloured sky in streams of paper; it is dusk in the nostrils and the smell of water down littered streets that lead you to no water, and gathering islands and lemons in the mind. There is the Hudson, like the sea aflame. I would undress you in the summer heat, and laugh and dry your damp flesh if you came.

My heart is bleeding. It bleeds upward and fills my mouth up with salt. It bleeds because of a city in ruins, the chair still warm from sister's body, because it will all be irreproducible. My heart bleeds because of baby bear not finding mama bear and it bleeds to the tips of my fingers like I painted my nails Crimson. Sometimes my heart bleeds so much I am a raisin. It bleeds until I am a quivering ragged clot, bleeds at the ending with the heroine and her sunken cancer eyes, at the ending with the plaintive flute over smoke-choked killing fields. I'm bleeding a river of blood right now and it's wearing a culvert in me for the blood. My heart rises up in me, becomes the cork of me and I choke on it. I am bleeding for you and for me and for the tiny babies and the IED-blown leg. It bleeds because I'm made that way, all filled up with blood, my sloppy heart a sponge filled with blood to squeeze onto any circumstance. Because it is mine, it will always bleed. My heart bled today. It bled onto the streets and the steps of city hall. It bled in the pizza parlor with the useless jukebox. I've got so much blood to give inside and outside of any milieu. Even for a bad zoning decision, I'll bleed so much you'll be bleeding, all of us bleeding in and out like it's breathing, or kissing, and because it is righteous and terrible and red.

At Steak ‘n Shake I learned that if you add “Bless their hearts” after their names, you can say whatever you want about them and it’s OK. My son, bless his heart, is an idiot,

Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine! O what a foretaste of glory divine! Heir of salvation, purchase of God, Born of His Spirit, washed in His blood! Chorus: This is my story, this is my song, Praising my Saviour all the day long. Perfect submission, perfect delight, Visions of rapture now burst on my sight; Angels descending bring from above Echoes of mercy, whispers of love. Perfect submission, all is at rest, I in my Saviour am happy and blest,— Watching and waiting, looking above, Filled with His goodness, lost in His love.