1630 Nature poems

Feeling rich for one moment for using money as a bookmark Feeling deceitful for making public some opinions while neglecting others Feeling disordered at the sight of three statues conspiring in a row Feeling insufficient for having a lukewarm reaction to news Feeling important for having been offered a seat at the table Feeling apologetic for nonetheless tuning out an argument Feeling blue for identifying some people who don’t respect you Feeling like a knife slipping into a pool of water for bearing 
disagreement Feeling redundant for moving in a similar direction as others Feeling angry for imagining the opening of the passage yet 
unopened for you Feeling antisocial for declining further missives from home

For Alicia The bird who creaks like a rusty playground swing the bird who sharpens the knife         the bird who blows on the mouths of milk bottles         the bird who bawls like a cat like a cartoon baby         the bird who rubs the wineglass the bird who curlicues         the bird who quacks like a duck but is not a duck         the bird who pinks on a jeweller's hammer They hide behind the sunlight scattered throughout the canopy At the thud of your feet they fall thoughtful and quiet coming to life again only when you have passed Perhaps they are not multiple         but one a many-mooded trickster         whose voice is rich and infinitely various         whose feathers liquify the rainbow         rippling scarlet emerald indigo         whose streaming tail is rare as a comet's         a single glimpse of which is all that you could wish for         the one thing missing         to make your eyes at last feel full to meet this wild need of yours         for wonder

Invisible fish swim this ghost ocean now described by waves of sand, by water-worn rock. Soon the fish will learn to walk. Then humans will come ashore and paint dreams on the dying stone. Then later, much later, the ocean floor will be punctuated by Chevy trucks, carrying the dreamers’ decendants, who are going to the store.

This morning a cat—bright orange—pawing at the one patch of new grass in the sand-and tanbark-colored leaves. And last night the sapphire of the raccoon's eyes in the beam of the flashlight. He was climbing a tree beside the house, trying to get onto the porch, I think, for a wad of oatmeal Simmered in cider from the bottom of the pan we'd left out for the birds. And earlier a burnished, somewhat dazed woodchuck, his coat gleaming with spring, Loping toward his burrow in the roots of a tree among the drying winter's litter Of old leaves on the floor of the woods, when I went out to get the New York Times. And male cardinals whistling back and forth—sireeep, sreeep, sreeep— Sets of three sweet full notes, weaving into and out of each other like the triplet rhymes in medieval poetry, And the higher, purer notes of the tufted titmice among them, High in the trees where they were catching what they could of the early sun. And a doe and two yearlings, picking their way along the worrying path they'd made through the gully, their coats the color of the forest floor, Stopped just at the roots of the great chestnut where the woodchuck's burrow was, Froze, and the doe looked back over her shoulder at me for a long moment, and leapt forward, Her young following, and bounded with that almost mincing precision in the landing of each hoof Up the gully, over it, and out of sight. So that I remembered Dreaming last night that a deer walked into the house while I was writing at the kitchen table, Came in the glass door from the garden, looked at me with a stilled defiant terror, like a thing with no choices, And, neck bobbing in that fragile-seeming, almost mechanical mix of arrest and liquid motion, came to the table And snatched a slice of apple, and stood, and then quietened, and to my surprise did not leave again. And those little captains, the chickadees, swift to the feeder and swift away. And the squirrels with their smoke-plume tails trailing digging in the leaves to bury or find buried— I'm told they don't remember where they put things, that it's an activity of incessant discovery— Nuts, tree-fall proteins, whatever they forage from around the house of our leavings, And the flameheaded woodpecker at the suet with his black-and-white ladderback elegant fierceness— They take sunflower seeds and stash them in the rough ridges of the tree's bark Where the beaks of the smoke-and-steel blue nuthatches can't quite get at them— Though the nuthatches sometimes seem to get them as they con the trees methodically for spiders' eggs or some other overwintering insect's intricately packaged lump of futurity Got from its body before the cold came on. And the little bat in the kitchen lightwell— When I climbed on a chair to remove the sheet of wimpled plastic and let it loose, It flew straight into my face and I toppled to the floor, chair under me, And it flared down the hall and did what seemed a frantic reconnoiter of the windowed, high-walled living room. And lit on a brass firelog where it looked like a brown and ash grey teenaged suede glove with Mephistophelean dreams, And then, spurt of black sperm, up, out the window, and into the twilight woods. All this life going on about my life, or living a life about all this life going on, Being a creature, whatever my drama of the moment, at the edge of the raccoon's world— He froze in my flashlight beam and looked down, no affect, just looked, The ringtail curled and flared to make him look bigger and not to be messed with— I was thinking he couldn't know how charming his comic-book robber's mask was to me, That his experience of his being and mine of his and his of mine were things entirely apart, Though there were between us, probably, energies of shrewd and respectful tact, based on curiosity and fear— I knew about his talons whatever he knew about me— And as for my experience of myself, it comes and goes, I'm not sure it's any one thing, as my experience of these creatures is not, And I know I am often too far from it or too near, glad to be rid of it which is why it was such a happiness, The bright orange of the cat, and the first pool of green grass-leaves in early April, and the birdsong—that orange and that green not colors you'd set next to one another in the human scheme. And the crows' calls, even before you open your eyes, at sunup.

You’re right    in life’s chamber music either listen with total attention    or else switch off Water    one drop can perfectly lock up these shores The crash of waves has no gap    is like a tailored body still sitting on the rock    the lilac-scented surrounding ocean still striking at a little girl’s unceasing gaze into distance Purple or white    petals are stored in the eyes all through the springtime night, dark rings around the eyes keep opening    torn by where she looks far away Suffering is that waiting, underwater pearl what turns old is salt    low sobbing in every wave The fierce wind is a jade bracelet on the wrist Island    like a boat sailing since the day you were born never slowing down its disconsolate speed always arriving yet, underfoot, drawn away by the ebbing tide Purple    wounds the turbulent, close-up scene sets off white    the horizon like land cutting, above snow line, into fate exposing the snow flower you’ve caught for life Still wet    tears run halfway down the girl’s cheeks After so many years play the cold rain you’ve brought back A seagull plunges    then flies back up    You hear clearly this kiss

For Derek Walcott An island is one great eye gazing out, a beckoning lighthouse, searchlight, a wishbone compass, or counterweight to the stars. When it comes to outlook & point of view, a figure stands on a rocky ledge peering out toward an archipelago of glass on the mainland, a seagull’s wings touching the tip of a high wave, out to where the brain may stumble. But when a mind climbs down from its high craggy lookout we know it is truly a stubborn thing, & has to leaf through pages of dust & light, through pre-memory & folklore, remembering fires roared down there till they pushed up through the seafloor & plumes of ash covered the dead shaken awake worlds away,& silence filled up with centuries of waiting. Sea urchin, turtle,& crab came with earthly know-how, & one bird arrived with a sprig in its beak, before everything clouded with cries, a millennium of small deaths now topsoil & seasons of blossoms in a single seed. Light edged along salt-crusted stones, across a cataract of blue water, & lost sailors’ parrots spoke of sirens, the last words of men buried at sea. Someone could stand here contemplating the future, leafing through torn pages of St. Augustine or the prophecies by fishermen, translating spore & folly down to taproot. The dreamy-eyed boy still in the man, the girl in the woman, a sunny forecast behind today, but tomorrow’s beyond words. To behold a body of water is to know pig iron & mother wit. Whoever this figure is, he will soon return to dancing through the aroma of dagger’s log, ginger lily,& bougainvillea, between chants & strings struck till gourds rally the healing air, & till the church-steeple birds fly sweet darkness home. Whoever this friend or lover is, he intones redemptive harmonies. To lie down in remembrance is to know each of us is a prodigal son or daughter, looking out beyond land & sky, the chemical & metaphysical beyond falling & turning waterwheels in the colossal brain of damnable gods, a Eureka held up to the sun’s blinding eye, born to gaze into fire. After conquering frontiers, the mind comes back to rest, stretching out over the white sand.

to Rimbaud Two pages to a grape fable dangles the swan of samite blood shaping sand from thistle covered fog Over sacred lakes of fever (polished mouths of the vegetable frog rolling to my iron venus) I drop the chiseled pear Standing in smoke filled valleys (great domains of wingless flight and the angel’s fleshy gun) I stamp the houses of withering wax Bells of siren-teeth (singing to our tomb refusal’s last becoming) await the approach of the incendiary children lighting the moon-shaped beast Every twisted river pulls down my torn-out hair to ratless columns by the pyramid’s ghost (watered basin of the temple stink) and all the mud clocks in haste draw their mermaid-feather swords (wrapped by Dust) to nail them into the tears of the sea-gull child The winter web minute flutters beneath the spider’s goblet and the whores of all the fathers bleed for my delight

It includes the butterfly and the rat, the shit drying to chalk, trees falling at an angle, taking those moist and buried rootballs with them into deadly air. But someone will tell you the butterfly's the happy ending of every dirge-singing worm, the rat a river rat come up from a shimmering depth, the shit passed purely into scat one can read for a source, the creature that shadowed it one longish minute. And trees, of course they wanted to fall.It was their time or something equally sonorous. And wind too knows its mindless little whirlpool's not for nothing, not nothing—that pitch and rage stopped. How else does the sparrow's neck break.

It is a beauteous evening, calm and free, The holy time is quiet as a Nun Breathless with adoration; the broad sun Is sinking down in its tranquility; The gentleness of heaven broods o'er the Sea; Listen! the mighty Being is awake, And doth with his eternal motion make A sound like thunder—everlastingly. Dear child! dear Girl! that walkest with me here, If thou appear untouched by solemn thought, Thy nature is not therefore less divine: Thou liest in Abraham's bosom all the year; And worshipp'st at the Temple's inner shrine, God being with thee when we know it not.

a trouble archaically fettered to produce E Pluribus Unum an island in the sea a Capitol surmounted by Armed Liberty— painting sculpture straddled by a dome eight million pounds in weight iron plates constructed to expand and contract with variations of temperature the folding and unfolding of a lily. And Congress authorized and the Commission was entrusted was entrusted! a sculptured group Mars in Roman mail placing a wreath of laurel on the brow of Washington Commerce Minerva Thomas Jefferson John Hancock at the table Mrs. Motte presenting Indian burning arrows to Generals Marion and Lee to fire her mansion and dislodge the British— this scaleless jumble is superb and accurate in its expression of the thing they would destroy— Baptism of Poca- hontas with a little card hanging under it to tell the persons in the picture. It climbs it runs, it is Geo. Shoup of Idaho it wears a beard it fetches naked Indian women from a river Trumbull Varnum Henderson Frances Willard’s corset is absurd— Banks White Columbus stretched in bed men felling trees The Hon. Michael C. Kerr onetime Speaker of the House of Representatives Perry in a rowboat on Lake Erie changing ships the dead among the wreckage sickly green