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My mother was married by the water. She wore a gray coat and a winter rose. She said her vows beside a cold seam of the Irish coast. She said her vows near the shore where the emigrants set down their consonantal n: on after n oo n, on the e n d of everything, at the start of ever. Yellow vestments took in light. A chalice hid underneath its veil. Her hands were full of calla and cold-weather lilies. The mail packet dropped anchor. A black-headed gull swerved across the harbor. Icy promises rose beside a crosshatch of ocean and horizon. I am waiting for the words of the service. I am waiting for keep thee only and all my earthly. All I hear is an afternoon’s worth of never.

I'm working on my poems and working with my fingers not my head. Because my fingers are the farthest stretching things from me. Look at the tree. Like its longest branch I touch the evening's quiet breathing. Sounds of rain. The crackling heat from other trees. The tree points everywhere. The branches can't reach to their roots though. Growing longer they grow weaker also. Can't make use of water. Rain falls. But I'm working with these farthest stretching things from me. Along my fingertips bare shoots of days then years unfurl in the cold air.

I see it as it looked one afternoon In August,— by a fresh soft breeze o’erblown. The swiftness of the tide, the light thereon, A far-off sail, white as a crescent moon. The shining waters with pale currents strewn, The quiet fishing-smacks, the Eastern cove, The semi-circle of its dark, green grove. The luminous grasses, and the merry sun In the grave sky; the sparkle far and wide, Laughter of unseen children, cheerful chirp Of crickets, and low lisp of rippling tide, Light summer clouds fantastical as sleep Changing unnoted while I gazed thereon. All these fair sounds and sights I made my own.

The longë love that in my thought doth harbour And in mine hert doth keep his residence, Into my face presseth with bold pretence And therein campeth, spreading his banner. She that me learneth to love and suffer And will that my trust and lustës negligence Be rayned by reason, shame, and reverence, With his hardiness taketh displeasure. Wherewithall unto the hert's forest he fleeth, Leaving his enterprise with pain and cry, And there him hideth and not appeareth. What may I do when my master feareth But in the field with him to live and die? For good is the life ending faithfully.

You’re worried, so you wake her & you talk into the dark: Do you think I have cancer, you say, or Were there worms in that meat

Long neglect has worn away Half the sweet enchanting smile; Time has turned the bloom to gray; Mold and damp the face defile. But that lock of silky hair, Still beneath the picture twined, Tells what once those features were, Paints their image on the mind. Fair the hand that traced that line, “Dearest, ever deem me true”; Swiftly flew the fingers fine When the pen that motto drew.

Ice, entire cakes of it. Crows feed on sand. So poor is this season the ground steals color from the tree-shadows. • Can it be that nothing is as far as here? Just look! How much past we have to cover this evening– • Come to think of it don't forget to pick off this self and that self along the way. Though that’s not right– you spit them out like pits. • If there is a partition between the outer and inner worlds, how is it that some water in me churns between the mountain ranges? How is it we are absorbed so easily by the ground— • Long nights for simple words. • Slant rhyme of current thinking and past thinking. A chewed over hour, late. Where the long ago past and the future come to settle scores. • Traveling and traveling, but so much interior unpicked over by the eyes. • Nothing is as far as here.

(We can succeed only by concert. . . . The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves. . . . December 1, 1862. The President’s Message to Congress.) Be sad, be cool, be kind, remembering those now dreamdust hallowed in the ruts and gullies, solemn bones under the smooth blue sea, faces warblown in a falling rain. Be a brother, if so can be, to those beyond battle fatigue each in his own corner of earth or forty fathoms undersea beyond all boom of guns, beyond any bong of a great bell, each with a bosom and number, each with a pack of secrets, each with a personal dream and doorway and over them now the long endless winds with the low healing song of time, the hush and sleep murmur of time. Make your wit a guard and cover. Sing low, sing high, sing wide. Let your laughter come free remembering looking toward peace: “We must disenthrall ourselves.” Be a brother, if so can be, to those thrown forward for taking hardwon lines, for holding hardwon points and their reward so-so, little they care to talk about, their pay held in a mute calm, highspot memories going unspoken, what they did being past words, what they took being hardwon. Be sad, be kind, be cool. Weep if you must And weep open and shameless before these altars. There are wounds past words. There are cripples less broken than many who walk whole. There are dead youths with wrists of silence who keep a vast music under their shut lips, what they did being past words, their dreams like their deaths beyond any smooth and easy telling, having given till no more to give. There is dust alive with dreams of The Republic, with dreams of the Family of Man flung wide on a shrinking globe with old timetables, old maps, old guide-posts torn into shreds, shot into tatters burnt in a firewind, lost in the shambles, faded in rubble and ashes. There is dust alive. Out of a granite tomb, Out of a bronze sarcophagus, Loose from the stone and copper Steps a whitesmoke ghost Lifting an authoritative hand In the name of dreams worth dying for, In the name of men whose dust breathes of those dreams so worth dying for, what they did being past words, beyond all smooth and easy telling. Be sad, be kind, be cool, remembering, under God, a dreamdust hallowed in the ruts and gullies, solemn bones under the smooth blue sea, faces warblown in a falling rain. Sing low, sing high, sing wide. Make your wit a guard and cover. Let your laughter come free like a help and a brace of comfort. The earth laughs, the sun laughs over every wise harvest of man, over man looking toward peace by the light of the hard old teaching: “We must disenthrall ourselves.”

One marriage, three children, the usual hero-to-hump tale of jobs in alternating altitudes, stories of unrequited joy. Fresh identities, dramas unseen. Too much of dawn going dark, making for a rich meal of dread, when contemplating love above the brim. You also should talk about dealings with heavy weather and one-night agonies, as if descending permanently into a single distinction. It boils to skin and plain whim, or any fabrication sufficient to implicate the act. Just then, something glimpsed from a taxi careening through Paris, afterimages of a lost father’s face becomes a tree in the park, tall, rustling with allusions, or was it simply cool air stealing across your face— that isolation again?

Long time a child, and still a child, when years Had painted manhood on my cheek, was I,— For yet I lived like one not born to die; A thriftless prodigal of smiles and tears, No hope I needed, and I knew no fears. But sleep, though sweet, is only sleep, and waking, I waked to sleep no more, at once o’ertaking The vanguard of my age, with all arrears Of duty on my back. Nor child, nor man, Nor youth, nor sage, I find my head is grey, For I have lost the race I never ran: A rathe December blights my lagging May; And still I am a child, tho’ I be old, Time is my debtor for my years untold.