872 Life poems

My mother's maids, when they did sew and spin, They sang sometime a song of the field mouse, That, for because her livelood was but thin, Would needs go seek her townish sister's house. She thought herself endurèd too much pain; The stormy blasts her cave so sore did souse That when the furrows swimmèd with the rain, She must lie cold and wet in sorry plight; And worse than that, bare meat there did remain To comfort her when she her house had dight; Sometime a barley corn; sometime a bean; For which she laboured hard both day and night In harvest time whilst she might go and glean; And where store was stroyèd with the flood, Then well away! for she undone was clean. Then was she fain to take instead of food Sleep, if she might, her hunger to beguile. "My sister," quod she, "hath a living good, And hence from me she dwelleth not a mile. In cold and storm she lieth warm and dry In bed of down; the dirt doth not defile Her tender foot, she laboureth not as I. Richly she feedeth and at the richman's cost, And for her meat she needs not crave nor cry. By sea, by land, of the delicates, the most Her cater seeks, and spareth for no peril. She feedeth on boiled bacon meet and roast, And hath thereof neither charge nor travail; And when she list, the liquor of the grape Doth glad her heart till that her belly swell." And at this journey she maketh but a jape; So forth she goeth, trusting of all this wealth With her sister her part so for to shape, That if she might keep herself in health, To live a lady while her life doth last. And to the door now is she come by stealth, And with her foot anon she scrapeth full fast. Th' other for fear durst not well scarce appear, Of every noise so was the wretch aghast. At last she askèd softly who was there. And in her language, as well as she could, "Peep!" quod the other. "Sister, I am here." "Peace," quod the towny mouse, "why speakest thou so loud?" And by the hand she took her fair and well. "Welcome," quod she, "my sister, by the Rood!" She feasted her, that joy it was to tell The fare they had; they drank the wine so clear, And as to purpose now and then it fell, She cheerèd her with "How, sister, what cheer!" Amids this joy befell a sorry chance, That, well away! the stranger bought full dear The fare she had, for, as she look askance, Under a stool she spied two steaming eyes In a round head with sharp ears. In France Was never mouse so fear'd, for the unwise Had not i-seen such a beast before, Yet had nature taught her after her guise To know her foe and dread him evermore. The towny mouse fled, she know whither to go; Th' other had no shift, but wonders sore Feard of her life. At home she wished her tho, And to the door, alas! as she did skip, The Heaven it would, lo! and eke her chance was so, At the threshold her silly foot did trip; And ere she might recover it again, The traitor cat had caught her by the hip, And made her there against her will remain, That had forgotten her poor surety and rest For seeming wealth wherein she thought to reign. Alas, my Poynz, how men do seek the best And find the worst, by error as they stray! And no marvail; when sight is so opprest. And blind the guide; anon out of the way Goeth guide and all in seeking quiet life. O wretched minds, there is no gold that may Grant that ye seek; no war, no peace, no strife. No, no, although thy head were hooped with gold, Sergeant with mace, hawbert, sword, nor knife, Cannot repulse the care that follow should. Each kind of life hath with him his disease. Live in delight even as thy lust would, And thou shalt find, when lust doth most thee please, It irketh straight and by itself doth fade. A small thing it is that may thy mind appease. None of ye all there is that is so mad To seek grapes upon brambles or breres; Nor none, I trow, that hath his wit so bad To set his hay for conies over rivers, Ne ye set not a drag-net for an hare; And yet the thing that most is your desire Ye do mis-seek with more travail and care. Make plain thine heart, that it be not knotted With hope or dread, and see thy will be bare From all affects, whom vice hath ever spotted. Thyself content with that is thee assigned, And use it well that is to thee allotted. Then seek no more out of thyself to find The thing that thou hast sought so long before, For thou shalt feel it sitting in thy mind. Mad, if ye list to continue your sore, Let present pass and gape on time to come, And deep yourself in travail more and more. Henceforth, my Poynz, this shall be all and some, These wretched fools shall have nought else of me; But to the great God and to his high doom, None other pain pray I for them to be, But when the rage doth lead them from the right, That, looking backward, Virtue they may see, Even as she is, so goodly fair and bright; And whilst they clasp their lusts in arms across, Grant them, good Lord, as Thou mayst of Thy might To fret inward for losing such a loss.

I like to lie with you wordless on black cloud rooft beach in late june 5 o’clock tempest on clump weed bed with sand fitting your contours like tailor made and I like to wash my summer brown face in north cold hudson rapids with octagon soap knees niched in steamy rocks where last night’s frog stared at our buddhist sleep but most of all I like to see the morning happen . . . I like to go down vertical mountains where lanny goshkitch meditated crashing poplars sap sticky arms flailing as thermosed green tea anoints sneakers and blood soakt brow I taste and love myself a split second and I like to feel my own full scrotum as I horizon the whole crisp linen earth in my beatitude waiting miguel-like in maskt fantasy for christ-like you— whoever you are but most of all I like to see the morning happen . . . I like to look at books howl haikus of the seasons of the mind that I might know the knowing and the simplest to think of all of us taking turns at catching each other in the rye and I like to taste cold absinthe on hot hung sunday mornings discussing orgies symposiums and sounds with hoary headed poets in upstairs jazz club in Japan but most of all I like to see the morning happen when k and ike still sleep and only the denver night riders hum contrasts to orient jazzy feather beasts in the dewy garden of real earth where I can sink my naked feet cool

Often rebuked, yet always back returning To those first feelings that were born with me, And leaving busy chase of wealth and learning For idle dreams of things which cannot be: To-day, I will seek not the shadowy region; Its unsustaining vastness waxes drear; And visions rising, legion after legion, Bring the unreal world too strangely near. I’ll walk, but not in old heroic traces, And not in paths of high morality, And not among the half-distinguished faces, The clouded forms of long-past history. I’ll walk where my own nature would be leading: It vexes me to choose another guide: Where the gray flocks in ferny glens are feeding; Where the wild wind blows on the mountain side. What have those lonely mountains worth revealing? More glory and more grief than I can tell: The earth that wakes one human heart to feeling Can centre both the worlds of Heaven and Hell.

taking in what it hears surprised at the way of path the laid down before the adventured after smiling grip on what you want would never let me down I know you we say after never having met how listening to the other side makes you wish for quiet miles of ocean beneath this rock go on let your hair down such subtle indignity a sunset against a moon looking for a way out but I won’t say anything won’t call you on your everything you where you are and me right here saying yeah with a shut mouth

We were made to understand it would be Terrible. Every small want, every niggling urge, Every hate swollen to a kind of epic wind. Livid, the land, and ravaged, like a rageful Dream. The worst of us having taken over And broken the rest utterly down. A long age Passed. When at last we knew how little Would survive us—how little we had mended Or built that was not now lost—something Large and old awoke. And then our singing Brought on a different manner of weather. Then animals long believed gone crept down From trees. We took new stock of one another. We wept to be reminded of such color.

A few days after my mother died the furnace went out, and my father, who had been sitting in his chair across from hers since the funeral, his unshaven chin on his chest, heaved himself up and went down the cold gray cellar stairs to see if he could relight the pilot himself or would have to call for help. I know what it must have been like because I remember him other times on his back down there, cursing match after match, god damning each for burning his fingers, as he reached through the tiny metal door as many times as it took. This time it lit, caught, and roared back to life. When my father sat up he faced the washer, the dryer, the empty laundry basket, the ironing board, and my mother’s radio above the sink, her absence so vivid that climbing the stairs he thought he heard her behind him, and he turned around.

You plan an uncomplicated path through Colorado’s red dust, around the caustic edge of Utah’s salt flats a single night at a hotel in the Idaho panhandle. Our plans change. It’s spring, we are two Indian women along together and the days open: sunrise on a fine long road, antelope against dry hills, heron emerging from dim fields. You tell me this is a journey you’ve always wanted to take. You ask me to tell you what I want. I want my longing to miraculously bring you through the barrier of your skin into my blood so that I can possess you entirely and yet be entirely possessed. You say no, your face tight with pain, tears burning your eyes, hands clenching the steering wheel. I believe you. We drive hundreds of miles across deserts sculpted by wind and story, and I learn distance from my hand to your thigh, your mouth to my mouth, the curve of a collar along a warm, smooth neck. You grin as if no one has ever seen you thus: naked, savage, happy. That is the beginning of yes. Ghosts are everywhere. We hear them singing on that mountain in Ute country, the cries of your flute pleasuring old spirits. Like those people whose land we cross, we don’t live by lines drawn on paper. Instead, we mark the waterfall of shy kisses, a dry windy town where we exchange secrets in whispers, the high cliff hollow that shelters us on the edge of the Uinta forest. Wildflowers bend beneath our bodies, cup the trembling weight of touch. We wander for awhile in a place vast enough to contain all possibilities. After twelve hundred miles together we enter green forest thick along a fearless river. This dense topography we can’t see through, can’t find the horizon to judge distances or the arc of the sun to know east from west. There at last you clasp my hand, guide it to a place beyond maps, no universe I have ever known. It is a raw landscape; we are the sojourners overcome by the perilous shock of arrival. We stop the car, walk by the river, clumsy, frightened by desire. I wish for more than body or soul can bear. Sweet, these are the maps we made together, territories we foolishly vowed to own. Here, the place we wandered off the map, moved deep into a land without scars where every direction took us home but no place could give us shelter. I don’t know how to survive awakening in a woman’s body with a child’s broken heart. I fall on my knees, our love a bare stone on the windowsill between us. How can I learn this trick, will your body back to the other side of my skin? Help me translate loss the way this land does— flood, earthquake, landslide— terrible, and alive.

We had a grief we didn't understand while standing at the edge of some low scrub hills as if humans were extra or already gone;— what had been in us before? a life that asks for mostly wanting freedom to get things done in order to feel less helpless about the end of things alone—; when i think of time on earth, i feel the angle of gray minutes entering the medium days yet not "built-up":: our work together: groups, the willing burden of an old belief, & beyond them love, as of a great life going like fast creatures peeling back marked seeds, gold-brown integuments the color time will be when we are gone—

Please think of this as not merely a piece Of writing that anyone would fully Appreciate, but as plain and simple Words that attempt to arouse whatever Appetencies you, especially, depend Upon language to fulfill; that drench you In several levels of meaning at once, Rendering my presence superfluous. In other words, welcome this as a poem, Not merely a missive I’ve slowly composed And tucked under your windshield wiper So that these onlookers who saw me bash In your fender will think I’m jotting down The usual information and go away.

The first step is to stop just beyond the weight of organs. The sense of gravity sitting in tissue is like the space between carcass and curb, before the reek worms into rock pores: a sleeplessness there, that continual niche-trash. You too once knew what it was to feel impressive. As the bed dissolves into the walls, the walls disrobe themselves of their edges and your resolve is now acute in the locking jaw of darkness. Beg to be let. You, like bravery, leave behind the breath-inflated lump, its depths, and its refusal to lace the cells of scars over even the metaphorical guttings. To manage the act exceeds the box- and-whisker of lately’s along-going. You’ve grown so accustomed to mereness that what you call a life no longer houses the sublime. It seems easy to leave. It seems this easy to leave. After a second you’ll want to consider the centimeters of resistance stitching air between here and all of elsewhere. But, still, inhabit the bodiless second. To possess it is a bearable joy.