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To the memory of a friend, drowned off Water Island, April, 1960 Finally, from your house, there is no view; The bay’s blind mirror shattered over you And Patchogue took your body like a log The wind rolled up to shore. The senseless drowned Have faces nobody would care to see, But water loves those gradual erasures Of flesh and shoreline, greenery and glass, And you belonged to water, it to you, Having built, on a hillock, above the bay, Your house, the bay giving you reason to, Where now, if seasons still are running straight, The horseshoe crabs clank armor night and day, Their couplings far more ancient than the eyes That watched them from your porch. I saw one once Whose back was a history of how we live; Grown onto every inch of plate, except Where the hinges let it move, were living things, Barnacles, mussels, water weeds—and one Blue bit of polished glass, glued there by time: The origins of art. It carried them With pride, it seemed, as if endurance only Matters in the end. Or so I thought. Skimming traffic lights, starboard and port, Steer through planted poles that mark the way, And other lights, across the bay, faint stars Lining the border of Long Island’s shore, Come on at night, they still come on at night, Though who can see them now I do not know. Wild roses, at your back porch, break their blood, And bud to test surprises of sea air, And the birds fly over, gliding down to feed At the two feeding stations you set out with seed, Or splash themselves in a big bowl of rain You used to fill with water. Going across That night, too fast, too dark, no one will know, Maybe you heard, the last you’ll ever hear, The cry of the savage and endemic gull Which shakes the blood and always brings to mind The thought that death, the scavenger, is blind, Blunders and is stupid, and the end Comes with ironies so fine the seed Falters in the marsh and the heron stops Hunting in the weeds below your landing stairs, Standing in a stillness that now is yours.

(To William and Flora Johnstone) Wheesht, wheesht, Joyce, and let me hear Nae Anna Livvy’s lilt, But Wauchope, Esk, and Ewes again, Each wi’ its ain rhythms till’t.

The Body as Nature, History All motivations intermingle as the core of history, the internal becomes external... all as parts of the body. — maurice merleau-ponty i.               the positing of space, corporeal history medium of my body

My earliest wish was not to exist, to burst in the backyard without violence, no blood, no fleshy bits, mute button pressed alone behind the rectory where no one would see me. This wasn’t a plea to be found or mourned for, but to be unborn into the atmosphere. To hang in the humid air, as ponds vent upward from the overheated earth, rise until they freeze and crystallize, then drop into the aquifer.

The water was rising, I got up on the bed Still wearing the Hawaiian shirt he had on yesterday He used his thoughts to draw a rudimentary circle on the wall Hitting Beirut and killing 22 civilians But now go the bells, and we are ready Novelty is no better than repetition That graces the walls of toilet stalls with hooey And comparison with the dead—their slimy cruelty—and meatballs Perched like ghostly birds Believing in old men’s lies, then too late unbelieving There’s rough life in the rust Long-buried whore’s eggs, razor-clams with shells Pirates dressed in pink and pit-bulls on parade With power to extend the longevity of learned fear in the mouse And a heron on the horizon many sewing-days ago Jane, Jane, ascend the stairs Of the river’s mouth at the year’s turn Thus predicting the shock to the tale that so entertains grown children Of the animals that have nearly all forsaken us

for New Orleans and the people of the Gulf Coast water water water wind water across the land shape of a torn heart new orleans waves come louisiana the waves come alabama wind calls alabama and the roofs blow across red clouds inside the divine spiral there is a voice inside the voice there is light water wind fire smoke the bodies float and rise kind flames bow down and move across the skies never seen blackish red bluish bruised water rises houses fall the child the elders the mothers underwater who will live who will rise the windows fill with the howling where is the transfusion where is the lamp who who in the wet night jagged in the oil waves come the lakes loosen their sultry shape it is the shape of a lost hand a wing broken casinos in biloxi become carnations across the sands and the woman in the wheelchair descends her last breath a rose in the razor rain uptown on mansion hill even the million dollar house bows in the negative shade someone is afloat a family dissolves the nation disappears neighborhoods fade across lost streets the police dressed in newspapers flutter toward nothingness moons who goes there under our floors filtered wooden stars towels and glass gasoline coffins the skin of trees and jalopy tires fish bebop dead from the zoo the dogs half drag ward number nine miss Symphony Spikes and mrs. Hardy Johnson the new plankton new algae of the nameless stroll in the dark ask the next question about kindness then there is a bus a taxi a hearse a helicopter a rescue team a tiny tribe of nine year olds separating the waters the oils and ashes hear the song of splinters and blood tree sap machine oil and old jazz trumpeters z's and x's raffia skirts and jujube hats and a father man holds the hand of his lover saying take care of the children let me go now let me stumble stumble nowhere drink this earth liquor going in petals stadiums and looters celebrities cameras cases more water cases again and again a new land edge emerges a new people emerges where race and class and death and life and water and tears and loss and life and death destruction and life and tears compassion and loss and a fire stolen bus rumbles toward you all directions wherever you are alive still

Ae weet forenicht i’ the yow-trummle I saw yon antrin thing, A watergaw wi’ its chitterin’ licht Ayont the on-ding; An’ I thocht o’ the last wild look ye gied Afore ye deed! There was nae reek i’ the laverock’s hoose That nicht—an’ nane i’ mine; But I hae thocht o’ that foolish licht Ever sin’ syne; An’ I think that mebbe at last I ken What your look meant then.

for Richard Griffith 1  THE BURNING Girl grown woman     fire     mother of fire I go to the stone street turning to fire.     Voices Go screaming     Fire     to the green glass wall. And there where my youth flies blazing into fire The     dance     of sane and insane images, noon Of seasons and days.     Noontime of my one hour. Saw down the bright noon street the crooked faces Among the tall daylight in the city of change. The scene has walls     stone     glass     all my gone life One wall a web through which the moment walks And I am open, and the opened hour The world as water-garden     lying behind it. In a city of stone, necessity of fountains, Forces water fallen on glass, men with their axes. An arm of flame reaches from water-green glass, Behind the wall I know waterlilies Drinking their light, transforming light and our eyes Skythrown under water, clouds under those flowers, Walls standing on all things stand in a city noon Who will not believe a waterlily fire. Whatever can happen in a city of stone, Whatever can come to a wall can come to this wall. I walk in the river of crisis toward the real, I pass guards, finding the center of my fear And you, Dick, endlessly my friend during storm. The arm of flame striking through the wall of form. 2  THE ISLAND Born of this river and this rock island, I relate The changes : I born when the whirling snow Rained past the general’s grave and the amiable child White past the windows of the house of Gyp the Blood. General, gangster, child.     I know in myself the island. I was the island without bridges, the child down whose blazing Eye the men of plumes and bone raced their canoes and fire Among the building of my young childhood, houses; I was those changes, the live darknesses Of wood, the pale grain of a grove in the fields Over the river fronting red cliffs across— And always surrounding her the river, birdcries, the wild Father building his sand, the mother in panic her parks— Bridges were thrown across, the girl arose From sleeping streams of change in the change city. The violent forgetting, the naked sides of darkness. Fountain of a city in growth, and island of light and water. Snow striking up past the graves, the yellow cry of spring. Whatever can come to a city can come to this city. Under the tall compulsion of the past I see the city change like a man changing I love this man with my lifelong body of love I know you among your changes wherever I go Hearing the sounds of building the syllables of wrecking A young girl watching the man throwing red hot rivets Coals in a bucket of change How can you love a city that will not stay? I love you like a man of life in change. Leaves like yesterday shed, the yellow of green spring Like today accepted and become one’s self I go, I am a city with bridges and tunnels, Rock, cloud, ships, voices.     To the man where the river met The tracks, now buried deep along the Drive Where blossoms like sex pink, dense pink, rose, pink, red. Towers falling.     A dream of towers. Necessity of fountains.     And my poor, Stirring among our dreams, Poor of my own spirit, and tribes, hope of towers And lives, looking out through my eyes. The city the growing body of our hate and love. The root of the soul, and war in its black doorways. A male sustained cry interrupting nightmare. Male flower heading upstream. Among a city of light, the stone that grows. Stigma of dead stone, inert water, the tattered Monuments rivetted against flesh. Blue noon where the wall made big agonized men Stand like sailors pinned howling on their lines, and I See stopped in time a crime behind green glass, Lilies of all my life on fire. Flash faith in a city building its fantasies. I walk past the guards into my city of change. 3  JOURNEY CHANGES Many of us     Each in his own life waiting Waiting to move     Beginning to move     Walking And early on the road of the hill of the world Come to my landscapes emerging on the grass The stages of the theatre of the journey I see the time of willingness between plays Waiting and walking and the play of the body Silver body with its bosses and places One by one touched awakened into into Touched and turned one by one into     flame The theatre of the advancing goddess     Blossoming Smiles as she stands intensely being in stillness Slowness in her blue dress advancing standing I go And far across a field over the jewel grass The play of the family stroke by stroke acted out Gestures of deep acknowledging on the journey stages Of the playings the play of the goddess and the god A supple god of searching and reaching Who weaves his strength     Who dances her more alive The theatre of all animals, my snakes, my great horses Always the journey     long     patient     many haltings Many waitings for choice and again easy breathing When the decision to go on is made Along the long slopes of choice and again the world The play of poetry approaching in its solving Solvings of relations in poems and silences For we were born to express     born for a journey Caves, theatres, the companioned solitary way And then I came to the place of mournful labor A turn in the road and the long sight from the cliff Over the scene of the land dug away to nothing and many Seen to a stripped horizon carrying barrows of earth A hod of earth taken and emptied and thrown away Repeated farther than sight.     The voice saying slowly But it is hell.     I heard my own voice in the words Or it could be a foundation     And after the words My chance came.     To enter.     The theatres of the world. 4  FRAGILE I think of the image brought into my room Of the sage and the thin young man who flickers and asks. He is asking about the moment when the Buddha Offers the lotus, a flower held out as declaration. “Isn’t that fragile?” he asks.     The sage answers: “I speak to you.     You speak to me.     Is that fragile?” 5  THE LONG BODY This journey is exploring us. Where the child stood An island in a river of crisis, now The bridges bind us in symbol, the sea Is a bond, the sky reaches into our bodies. We pray : we dive into each other’s eyes. Whatever can come to a woman can come to me. This is the long body : into life from the beginning, Big-headed infant unfolding into child, who stretches and finds And then flowing the young one going tall, sunward, And now full-grown, held, tense, setting feet to the ground, Going as we go in the changes of the body, As it is changes, in the long strip of our many Shapes, as we range shifting through time. The long body : a procession of images. This moment in a city, in its dream of war. We chose to be, Becoming the only ones under the trees when the harsh sound Of the machine sirens spoke. There were these two men, And the bearded one, the boys, the Negro mother feeding Her baby. And threats, the ambulance with open doors. Now silence. Everyone else within the walls. We sang. We are the living island, We the flesh of this island, being lived, Whoever knows us is part of us today. Whatever can happen to anyone can happen to me. Fire striking its word among us, waterlilies Reaching from darkness upward to a sun Of rebirth, the implacable.     And in our myth The Changing Woman who is still and who offers. Eyes drinking light, transforming light, this day That struggles with itself, brings itself to birth. In ways of being, through silence, sources of light Arriving behind my eye, a dialogue of light. And everything a witness of the buried life. This moment flowing across the sun, this force Of flowers and voices body in body through space. The city of endless cycles of the sun. I speak to you     You speak to me

From a microlight, the Owens River, cut and siphoned to an aqueduct: a corridor through banks of trees, into scuffed desert dunes, mountains scaling to the right, to the left dry veins in the valley, saline and pink, the water channeled slowly through scatch grass, under dirt tracks and fences, twenty miles, thirty — black line turning silver in midday sun, dipping beneath the roar of Route 395 into the shade of the alkaline hills. It zigzags past farms, arcs around quarries, swipes the bar code of a glinting new town, the alien discs of pivot irrigation growing sunflowers, roses, and corn. Then follows the highway, just after Big Pine, rejoins the river north of Fish Springs, is diverted again, south of the reservoir — And does water care, if it’s river or aqueduct? Its vessel curved concrete, but the same constant flow, gunneling south, hugging the contours of eastern Sierra, past Independence, the airport, the golf course, along the right hand of Owens’ dry lake bed, red swirling dust clouds kept down by sprinklers. From up in the air the twin Haiwee Reservoir is knuckle and knee joint where the line disappears — becomes pipeline and conduit under the desert, punching for groundwater, surfacing riveted over Mojave, two hundred miles on from its native cradle, gray zombie spring tracing through forest to Santa Clarita, the treatment plant: the last reserve and loud cascades above the lights and life of Los Angeles.

The mornings are his, blue and white like the tablecloth at breakfast. He’s happy in the house, a sweep of the spoon brings the birds under his chair. He sings and the dishes disappear. Or holding a crayon like a candle, he draws a circle. It is his hundredth dragonfly. Calling for more paper, this one is red-winged and like the others, he wills it to fly, simply by the unformed curve of his signature. Waterwings he calls them, the floats I strap to his arms. I wear an apron of concern, sweep the morning of birds. To the water he returns, plunging where it’s cold, moving and squealing into sunlight. The water from here seems flecked with gold. I watch the circles his small body makes fan and ripple, disperse like an echo into the sum of water, light and air. His imprint on the water has but a brief lifespan, the flicker of a dragonfly’s delicate wing. This is sadness, I tell myself, the morning he chooses to leave his wings behind, because he will not remember that he and beauty were aligned, skimming across the water, nearly airborne, on his first solo flight. I’ll write “how he could not contain his delight.” At the other end, in another time frame, he waits for me— having already outdistanced this body, the one that slipped from me like a fish, floating, free of itself.