1630 Nature poems

I rose from marsh mud, algae, equisetum, willows, sweet green, noisy birds and frogs to see her wed in the rich rich silence of the church, the little white slave-girl in her diamond fronds. In aisle and arch the satin secret collects. United for life to serve silver. Possessed.

I moved my chair into sun I sat in the sun the way hunger is moved when called fasting.

She was a village Of lovely knowledge

White horses, tails high, rise from the cedar. Smoke brings the fat crickets, trembling breeze. Find that holy place, a promise. Embers glow like moon air. I call you back from the grasses. Wake me when sand pipers fly. They fade, and new sounds flutter. Cattails at sunrise. Hair matted by sleep. Sun on the meadow. Grey boughs lie tangled. The ground I was born to wants me to leave. I’ve searched everywhere to tell you my eyes are with the hazels. Wind swells through fences, drones a flat ache for hours. At night, music would echo from your womanless bedroom. Far down those bleaching cliffs, roses shed a torrent. Will you brush my ear? An ice bear sometimes lumbers west. Your life still gleams, the edge melting. I never let you know. You showed me and how under snow and darkness, the grasses breathe for miles.

I walk back—nowhere, under moonlight. The dogs look as if they are angels, the ones I never imagined, with drooling silvery rays and torn behinds, yes, glowing in a strange and excited phosphor, dancing out of rhythm, racing up trees, chasing snails. This is like a children's book. O, yes, the children with rectangle heads and sack stomachs. With the eyes of Da Vinci, sad and impish, meticulous as Ibn Khaldun and taciturn as Nietzsche, phlegmatic and bitter, when they speak they leave opalescent liquids on the grasses, stuttered under a half-erased mural of Arafat, or is it Sharon, wait, the children never speak, they nod their heads, they carry huge bundles strapped across their foreheads. They weep under newspapers and roll up their skirts and wash them in the gutters, ponds, if they find them, then they run to the sea. This is where we meet, on occasion, we make up stories, we remember fruits and produce as if blessed by the plutonium blasts. "Remember the pears, they were so green, and the avocados, like guitars, honey-golden, and the asparagus, like a lion's rainy mane, and . . ." Our mouths water. Their mouths water, I am used to these stories. I am used to the land barren, bitten and aflame with lies. I am used to our faces in this new wild dispassionate light. I learned this from my musician friends, from years waging futile wars with poetry until I could not think of anything else.

I walk’d the other day, to spend my hour, Into a field, Where I sometimes had seen the soil to yield A gallant flow’r; But winter now had ruffled all the bow’r And curious store I knew there heretofore. Yet I, whose search lov’d not to peep and peer I’ th’ face of things, Thought with my self, there might be other springs Besides this here, Which, like cold friends, sees us but once a year; And so the flow’r Might have some other bow’r. Then taking up what I could nearest spy, I digg’d about That place where I had seen him to grow out; And by and by I saw the warm recluse alone to lie, Where fresh and green He liv’d of us unseen. Many a question intricate and rare Did I there strow; But all I could extort was, that he now Did there repair Such losses as befell him in this air, And would ere long Come forth most fair and young. This past, I threw the clothes quite o’er his head; And stung with fear Of my own frailty dropp’d down many a tear Upon his bed; Then sighing whisper’d, “happy are the dead! What peace doth now Rock him asleep below!” And yet, how few believe such doctrine springs From a poor root, Which all the winter sleeps here under foot, And hath no wings To raise it to the truth and light of things; But is still trod By ev’ry wand’ring clod. O Thou! whose spirit did at first inflame And warm the dead, And by a sacred incubation fed With life this frame, Which once had neither being, form, nor name; Grant I may so Thy steps track here below, That in these masques and shadows I may see Thy sacred way; And by those hid ascents climb to that day, Which breaks from Thee, Who art in all things, though invisibly! Shew me thy peace, Thy mercy, love, and ease, And from this care, where dreams and sorrows reign, Lead me above, Where light, joy, leisure, and true comforts move Without all pain; There, hid in thee, shew me his life again, At whose dumb urn Thus all the year I mourn.

I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o'er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. Continuous as the stars that shine And twinkle on the milky way, They stretched in never-ending line Along the margin of a bay: Ten thousand saw I at a glance, Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. The waves beside them danced; but they Out-did the sparkling waves in glee: A poet could not but be gay, In such a jocund company: I gazed—and gazed—but little thought What wealth the show to me had brought: For oft, when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude; And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils.

Sound of the rain so I know there’s constraint sound of  the train so I know commerce has not come to a standstill now they raise the barrier now they set it back in place What coats the bottom of  the surface of  the sound when the swifts come in when the clerks come home who will bathe the children who will bake the bread when the luff is tight when the mainsheet starts the boat underway whatever you do don’t let the tongue slip from its moorings what’s that song? love lift us up where we belong I ate the pill and the pill was real

Sound of the rain so I know there's constraint sound of the train so I know commerce has not come to a standstill now they raise the barrier now they set it back in place What coats the bottom of the surface of the sound when the swifts come in when the clerks come home who will bathe the children who will bake the bread when the luff is tight when the mainsheet starts the boat underway whatever you do don't let the tongue slip from its moorings what's that song? love lift us up where we belong I ate the pill and the pill was real

We watched from the house as the river grew, helpless and terrible in its unfamiliar body. Wrestling everything into it, the water wrapped around trees until their life-hold was broken. They went down, one by one, and the river dragged off their covering. Nests of the herons, roots washed to bones, snags of soaked bark on the shoreline: a whole forest pulled through the teeth of the spillway. Trees surfacing singly, where the river poured off into arteries for fields below the reservation. When at last it was over, the long removal, they had all become the same dry wood. We walked among them, the branches whitening in the raw sun. Above us drifted herons, alone, hoarse-voiced, broken, settling their beaks among the hollows. Grandpa said,These are the ghosts of the tree people moving among us, unable to take their rest.