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I am dreaming of a house just like this one but larger and opener to the trees, nighter than day and higher than noon, and you, visiting, knocking to get in, hoping for icy milk or hot tea or whatever it is you like. For each night is a long drink in a short glass. A drink of blacksound water, such a rush and fall of lonesome no form can contain it. And if it isn’t night yet, though I seem to recall that it is, then it is not for everyone. Did you receive my invitation? It is not for everyone. Please come to my house lit by leaf light. It’s like a book with bright pages filled with flocks and glens and groves and overlooked by Pan, that seductive satyr in whom the fish is also cooked. A book that took too long to read but minutes to unread— that is—to forget. Strange are the pages thus. Nothing but the hope of company. I made too much pie in expectation. I was hoping to sit with you in a tree house in a nightgown in a real way. Did you receive my invitation? Written in haste, before leaf blinked out, before the idea fully formed. An idea like a storm cloud that does not spill or arrive but moves silently in a direction. Like a dark book in a long life with a vague hope in a wood house with an open door.

In Spanish he whispers there is no time left. It is the sound of scythes arcing in wheat, the ache of some field song in Salvador. The wind along the prison, cautious as Francisco’s hands on the inside, touching the walls as he walks, it is his wife’s breath slipping into his cell each night while he imagines his hand to be hers. It is a small country. There is nothing one man will not do to another. 1979

This is the house of Bedlam. This is the man that lies in the house of Bedlam. This is the time of the tragic man that lies in the house of Bedlam. This is a wristwatch telling the time of the talkative man that lies in the house of Bedlam. This is a sailor wearing the watch that tells the time of the honored man that lies in the house of Bedlam. This is the roadstead all of board reached by the sailor wearing the watch that tells the time of the old, brave man that lies in the house of Bedlam. These are the years and the walls of the ward, the winds and clouds of the sea of board sailed by the sailor wearing the watch that tells the time of the cranky man that lies in the house of Bedlam. This is a Jew in a newspaper hat that dances weeping down the ward over the creaking sea of board beyond the sailor winding his watch that tells the time of the cruel man that lies in the house of Bedlam. This is a world of books gone flat. This is a Jew in a newspaper hat that dances weeping down the ward over the creaking sea of board of the batty sailor that winds his watch that tells the time of the busy man that lies in the house of Bedlam. This is a boy that pats the floor to see if the world is there, is flat, for the widowed Jew in the newspaper hat that dances weeping down the ward waltzing the length of a weaving board by the silent sailor that hears his watch that ticks the time of the tedious man that lies in the house of Bedlam. These are the years and the walls and the door that shut on a boy that pats the floor to feel if the world is there and flat. This is a Jew in a newspaper hat that dances joyfully down the ward into the parting seas of board past the staring sailor that shakes his watch that tells the time of the poet, the man that lies in the house of Bedlam. This is the soldier home from the war. These are the years and the walls and the door that shut on a boy that pats the floor to see if the world is round or flat. This is a Jew in a newspaper hat that dances carefully down the ward, walking the plank of a coffin board with the crazy sailor that shows his watch that tells the time of the wretched man that lies in the house of Bedlam.

You saved me, you should remember me. The spring of the year; young men buying tickets for the ferryboats. Laughter, because the air is full of apple blossoms. When I woke up, I realized I was capable of the same feeling. I remember sounds like that from my childhood, laughter for no cause, simply because the world is beautiful, something like that. Lugano. Tables under the apple trees. Deckhands raising and lowering the colored flags. And by the lake’s edge, a young man throws his hat into the water; perhaps his sweetheart has accepted him. Crucial sounds or gestures like a track laid down before the larger themes and then unused, buried. Islands in the distance. My mother holding out a plate of little cakes— as far as I remember, changed in no detail, the moment vivid, intact, having never been exposed to light, so that I woke elated, at my age hungry for life, utterly confident— By the tables, patches of new grass, the pale green pieced into the dark existing ground. Surely spring has been returned to me, this time not as a lover but a messenger of death, yet it is still spring, it is still meant tenderly.

let me get the vocabulary of this song right—the curious happiness of poetry— the word materialism dropped by the way side—its mereness of the other face of spiritualism—just two notes to sing— repetitious dualism— do — do —once in a while one squawks louder than the other, baby crows being weaned before the next batch— thus, singing, move from how it does matter— Oh!—a murder of crows 1998

Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me, Saying that now you are not as you were When you had changed from the one who was all to me, But as at first, when our day was fair. Can it be you that I hear? Let me view you, then, Standing as when I drew near to the town Where you would wait for me: yes, as I knew you then, Even to the original air-blue gown! Or is it only the breeze, in its listlessness Travelling across the wet mead to me here, You being ever dissolved to wan wistlessness, Heard no more again far or near? Thus I; faltering forward, Leaves around me falling, Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward, And the woman calling.

Rotten, he says, motherly how could you miss that Like a ragamuffin with no eyes his body has a dark spot Like doing laundry all day long he is being nowhere Cottage cheese runs out his mouth Another one and another one that doll can crawl his insides like an awning Motherly if mother mother as if spread If I could break the hymen of his ear with I can't stand you I won't say a thing and I won't notice god you are the softest kind of jerk and yesterday is gone and I had nothing to do with it

We've packed our bags, we're set to fly no one knows where, the maps won't do. We're crossing the ocean's nihilistic blue with an unborn infant's opal eye. It has the clarity of earth and sky seen from a spacecraft, once removed, as through an amniotic lens, that groove- lessness of space, the last star by. We have set out to live and die into the interstices of a new nowhere to be or be returning to (a little like an infant's airborne cry). We've set our sights on nothing left to lose and made of loss itself a lullaby.

Standing at the baggage passing time: Austin Texas airport—my ride hasn’t come yet. My former wife is making websites from her home, one son’s seldom seen, the other one and his wife have a boy and girl of their own. My wife and stepdaughter are spending weekdays in town so she can get to high school. My mother ninety-six still lives alone and she’s in town too, always gets her sanity back just barely in time. My former former wife has become a unique poet; most of my work, such as it is             is done. Full moon was October second this year, I ate a mooncake, slept out on the deck white light beaming through the black boughs of the pine owl hoots and rattling antlers, Castor and Pollux rising strong —it’s good to know that the Pole Star drifts! that even our present night sky slips away, not that I’ll see it. Or maybe I will, much later, some far time walking the spirit path in the sky, that long walk of spirits—where you fall right back into the “narrow painful passageway of the Bardo” squeeze your little skull and there you are again waiting for your ride (October 5, 2001)

Look, above the creek, hummingbirds in the trumpet vine. Not too close, wait. See the green blurs stitching the leaves? Here at the edge of the millennium I don’t imagine you’d call them anything as archaic as angels. But aren’t they agents of a sort, and secret, dissolving and solidifying, spying from their constantly shifting perches of air, always nervous of us, risking only a stab in a bell of petals? Don’t look so stunned, lay your pack in the needles and catch a breath. I know, you thought you knew me, and now to hear me talk this way ... I’m glad I’ve stopped pretending to love people and the cities where people can’t love themselves. This is what the quiet accomplishes, and the water trusting the shadows to eventually peel back to the trees. Small wonder the angels are said to despise us. Still, without them how do we account for our meanness? Look at that, what else can promenade in the air? And how easily they’re alarmed, revving off into the mist.