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Things are not unmoving (or else what is ing there for?) The things once-living fall on the never-living all the more movingly for the eye that passes over them. The wind wells up to spill a trail of onces off the nevers, take opaque from eye to mind, or near it — every rocking takes some leaving to a stonish spirit.

Now here is a typical children’s story that happens in gorgeous October when the mothers are coming in the afternoon, wearing brisk boots and windy skirts to pick up the little children from the day care center Frost in the air the maples golden and crimson my son in a leaf pile in the playground dreaming I am late, the playground is almost empty, my husband will kill me I gather my son to go home, he forgets his sweater in the playground and I send him back he dawdles, he is playing with leaves in his mind, it is already a quarter to six, will you come on I say and hurry along the corridor, there are yellow and blue rocket paintings, but I feel bad and ask what did you do today, do you recognize this story, the way he stands and picks his nose, move I say, do you want dinner or not I’m going to make a nice dinner, fried chicken I wheedle, so could you please walk a little faster, okay, I walk a little faster and get upstairs myself, pivot on boot-heel, nobody there, he is putting something in his mouth, his sable eyelashes downcast, and I am swooping down the stairwell screaming damn you that’s filthy I told you not before dinner We are climbing the stairs and I am crying, my son is not crying I have shaken him, I have pried the sweet from his cheek I have slapped his cheek like a woman slapping a carpet with all my strength mothers are very strong he is too young to do anything about this will not remember he remembers it The mind is a leaf pile where you can bury anything, pain, the image of a woman who wears a necklace of skulls, a screaming woman you dig quickly and deposit the pulpy thing you drop leaves on it and it stays there, that is the story that is sticking in my mind as we push the exit door, and run through the evening wind to my car where I jerk the gearshift and pick up a little speed, going along this neat suburban avenue full of maples the mark of my hand a blush on my son’s cheek.

A Story of Holland The good dame looked from her cottage At the close of the pleasant day, And cheerily called to her little son Outside the door at play: “Come, Peter, come! I want you to go, While there is light to see, To the hut of the blind old man who lives Across the dike, for me; And take these cakes I made for him— They are hot and smoking yet; You have time enough to go and come Before the sun is set.” Then the good-wife turned to her labor, Humming a simple song, And thought of her husband, working hard At the sluices all day long; And set the turf a-blazing, And brought the coarse black bread; That he might find a fire at night, And find the table spread. And Peter left the brother, With whom all day he had played, And the sister who had watched their sports In the willow’s tender shade; And told them they ’d see him back before They saw a star in sight, Though he would n’t be afraid to go In the very darkest night! For he was a brave, bright fellow, With eye and conscience clear; He could do whatever a boy might do, And he had not learned to fear. Why, he would n’t have robbed a bird’s nest, Nor brought a stork to harm, Though never a law in Holland Had stood to stay his arm! And now, with his face all glowing, And eyes as bright as the day With the thoughts of his pleasant errand, He trudged along the way; And soon his joyous prattle Made glad a lonesome place— Alas! if only the blind old man Could have seen that happy face! Yet he somehow caught the brightness Which his voice and presence lent; And he felt the sunshine come and go As Peter came and went. And now, as the day was sinking, And the winds began to rise, The mother looked from her door again, Shading her anxious eyes; And saw the shadows deepen And birds to their homes come back, But never a sign of Peter Along the level track. But she said: “He will come at morning, So I need not fret or grieve— Though it is n’t like my boy at all To stay without my leave.” But where was the child delaying? On the homeward way was he, And across the dike while the sun was up An hour above the sea. He was stopping now to gather flowers, Now listening to the sound, As the angry waters dashed themselves Against their narrow bound. “Ah! well for us,” said Peter, “That the gates are good and strong, And my father tends them carefully, Or they would not hold you long! You ’re a wicked sea,” said Peter; “I know why you fret and chafe; You would like to spoil our lands and homes; But our sluices keep you safe!” But hark! Through the noise of waters Comes a low, clear, trickling sound; And the child’s face pales with terror, And his blossoms drop to the ground. He is up the bank in a moment, And, stealing through the sand, He sees a stream not yet so large As his slender, childish hand. ’T is a leak in the dike! He is but a boy, Unused to fearful scenes; But, young as he is, he has learned to know The dreadful thing that means. A leak in the dike! The stoutest heart Grows faint that cry to hear, And the bravest man in all the land Turns white with mortal fear. For he knows the smallest leak may grow To a flood in a single night; And he knows the strength of the cruel sea When loosed in its angry might. And the boy! He has seen the danger, And, shouting a wild alarm, He forces back the weight of the sea With the strength of his single arm! He listens for the joyful sound Of a footstep passing nigh; And lays his ear to the ground, to catch The answer to his cry. And he hears the rough winds blowing, And the waters rise and fall, But never an answer comes to him, Save the echo of his call. He sees no hope, no succor, His feeble voice is lost; Yet what shall he do but watch and wait, Though he perish at his post! So, faintly calling and crying Till the sun is under the sea; Crying and moaning till the stars Come out for company; He thinks of his brother and sister, Asleep in their safe warm bed; He thinks of his father and mother, Of himself as dying—and dead; And of how, when the night is over, They must come and find him at last: But he never thinks he can leave the place Where duty holds him fast. The good dame in the cottage Is up and astir with the light, For the thought of her little Peter Has been with her all night. And now she watches the pathway, As yester eve she had done; But what does she see so strange and black Against the rising sun? Her neighbors are bearing between them Something straight to her door; Her child is coming home, but not As he ever came before! “He is dead!” she cries; “my darling!” And the startled father hears, And comes and looks the way she looks, And fears the thing she fears: Till a glad shout from the bearers Thrills the stricken man and wife— “Give thanks, for your son has saved our land, And God has saved his life!” So, there in the morning sunshine They knelt about the boy; And every head was bared and bent In tearful, reverent joy. ’T is many a year since then; but still, When the sea roars like a flood, Their boys are taught what a boy can do Who is brave and true and good. For every man in that country Takes his son by the hand, And tells him of little Peter, Whose courage saved the land. They have many a valiant hero, Remembered through the years: But never one whose name so oft Is named with loving tears. And his deed shall be sung by the cradle, And told to the child on the knee, So long as the dikes of Holland Divide the land from the sea!

“The experience of truth is indispensible for the experience of beauty and the sense of beauty is guided by a leap in the dark.” Arthur Koestler I. Stoplights edged the licorice street with ribbon, neon embroidering wet sidewalks. She turned into the driveway and leaped in the dark. A blackbird perched on the bouncing twig of a maple, heard her whisper, “Stranger, lover, the lost days are over. While I walk from car to door, something inward opens like four o’clocks in rain. Earth, cold from autumn, pulls me. I can’t breathe the same with dirt for marrow and mist for skin, blurring my vision, my vision’s separate self. I stand drunk in this glitter, under the sky’s grey shelter. The city maple, not half so bitter, hurls itself in two directions, until both tips darken and disappear, as I darken my reflection in the smoking mirror of my home. How faint the sound of dry leaves, like the clattering keys of another morning, another world.” II. She looked out the window at some inward greying door. The maple held her glance, made ground fog from her cigarette. Beyond uneven stairs, children screamed, gunned each other down. Then she sealed her nimble dreams with water from a murky bay. “For him I map this galaxy of dust that turns without an answer. When it rains, I remember his face in the corridor of a past apartment and trace the anguish around his mouth, his wrinkled forehead, unguarded eyes, the foreign fruit of an intricate sadness. With the grace that remains, I catch a glint around a door I cannot enter. The clock echoes in dishtowels; I search love’s center and bang pans against the rubble of my day, the lucid grandeur of wet ground, the strangeness of a fatal sun that makes us mark on the margin of our loss, trust in the gossamer of touch, trust in the late-plowed field.” III. When the sun opened clouds and walked into her mongrel soul, she chopped celery into rocky remnants of the sea, and heard fat sing up bread, a better dying. The magnet in each seed of the green pepper kept her flying, floating toward memories that throb like clustered stars: the dark water laughter of ducks, a tangle of November oaks, toward sudden music on a wheel of brilliant dust where like a moon she must leap back and forth from emptiness. “I remember the moon shimmering loss and discovery along a water edge, and skirting a slice of carrot, I welcome eternity in that sad eye of autumn. Rare and real, I dance while vegetables sing in pairs. I hug my death, my chorus of years, and search and stretch and leap, for I will be apprentice to the blood in spite of the mood of a world that keeps rusting, rusting the wild throats of birds.” IV. In lamplight she saw the smoke of another’s dream: her daughter walk woods where snow weighs down pine, her son cry on a bridge that ends in deep-rooted dark, her man, stalled on a lonely road, realize his torque was alcohol and hatred. “Hungry for silence, I listen to wind, to the sound of water running down mountain, my own raw breath. Between the sounds, a seaborn god plays his reed in the caverns of my being. I wear his amethyst, let go my dreams: Millars, Lacewings, and Junebugs scatter, widen and batter the dark, brightening this loud dust with the fever of their eyes. Oh crazy itch that grabs us beyond loss and lets us forgive, so that we can answer birds and deer, lightning and rain, shadow and hurricane. Truth waits in the creek, cutting the winter brown hills. It sings with needles of ice, sings because of its scar.”

Thirty days hath September, April, June and November. All the rest have thirty-one, Excepting February alone, And that has twenty-eight days clear And twenty-nine in each leap year.

... if thou shouldst not be glad, I would divorce me from thy mother’s tomb, Sepulch’ring an adult’ress. — William Shakespeare , King Lear He faked my death, set up this ranch far from my three daughters. Suburban hellhole. With bracelet on ankle, house- arrest. At noon the bully sun shoulders a ripe moon. In the dark soaps reign. The anchors will often flash their glitterati weddings. Not one daughter has birthed an heir. In vitro — be damned. I hose the lawn and count the cars like fish slipping their shiny chrome along asphalt. Which sparrow missed? Cordelia — my gutted heart.

They said, my saints, my slogan-sayers sang, Be good, my child, in spite of all alarm. They stood, my fathers, tall in a row and said, Be good, be brave, you shall not come to harm. I heard them in my sleep and muttering dream, And murmuring cried, How shall I wake to this? They said, my poets, singers of my song, We cannot tell, since all we tell you is But history, we speak but of the dead. And of the dead they said such history (Their beards were blazing with the truth of it) As made of much of me a mystery.

They said, my saints, my slogan-sayers sang, Be good, my child, in spite of all alarm. They stood, my fathers, tall in a row and said, Be good, be brave, you shall not come to harm. I heard them in my sleep and muttering dream, And murmuring cried, How shall I wake to this? They said, my poets, singers of my song, We cannot tell, since all we tell you is But history, we speak but of the dead. And of the dead they said such history (Their beards were blazing with the truth of it) As made of much of me a mystery.

Before you can learn the trees, you have to learn The language of the trees. That’s done indoors, Out of a book, which now you think of it Is one of the transformations of a tree. The words themselves are a delight to learn, You might be in a foreign land of terms Like samara, capsule, drupe, legume and pome, Where bark is papery, plated, warty or smooth. But best of all are the words that shape the leaves— Orbicular, cordate, cleft and reniform— And their venation—palmate and parallel— And tips—acute, truncate, auriculate. Sufficiently provided, you may now Go forth to the forests and the shady streets To see how the chaos of experience Answers to catalogue and category. Confusedly. The leaves of a single tree May differ among themselves more than they do From other species, so you have to find, All blandly says the book, “an average leaf.” Example, the catalpa in the book Sprays out its leaves in whorls of three Around the stem; the one in front of you But rarely does, or somewhat, or almost; Maybe it’s not catalpa? Dreadful doubt. It may be weeks before you see an elm Fanlike in form, a spruce that pyramids, A sweetgum spiring up in steeple shape. Still,pedetemtim as Lucretius says, Little by little, you do start to learn; And learn as well, maybe, what language does And how it does it, cutting across the world Not always at the joints, competing with Experience while cooperating with Experience, and keeping an obstinate Intransigence, uncanny, of its own. Think finally about the secret will Pretending obedience to Nature, but Invidiously distinguishing everywhere, Dividing up the world to conquer it, And think also how funny knowledge is: You may succeed in learning many trees And calling off their names as you go by, But their comprehensive silence stays the same.

because it has no pure products because the Pacific Ocean sweeps along the coastline because the water of the ocean is cold and because land is better than ocean because I say we rather than they because I live in California I have eaten fresh artichokes and jacaranda bloom in April and May because my senses have caught up with my body my breath with the air it swallows my hunger with my mouth because I walk barefoot in my house because I have nursed my son at my breast because he is a strong American boy because I have seen his eyes redden when he is asked who he is because he answers I don’t know because to have a son is to have a country because my son will bury me here because countries are in our blood and we bleed them because it is late and too late to change my mind because it is time.