1630 Nature poems

Cylinder sacks of water filling the oceans, endless bullets of water, skins full of water rolling and tumbling as we came together. As though light broke us apart. As though light came with the rubble of words, though we die among the husks of remembering. It is as we knew it would be in the echoes of endless terminals, in the slow scaled guises of ourselves when we came together in the envelopes of ourselves, the bare shadow, the breath of words invisible; as slight errors repeating themselves; as degradation passes like madness through a crowd. It was not ordained. It was one drop of salt water against another.

O world, I cannot hold thee close enough! Thy winds, thy wide grey skies! Thy mists, that roll and rise! Thy woods, this autumn day, that ache and sag And all but cry with colour!   That gaunt crag To crush!   To lift the lean of that black bluff! World, World, I cannot get thee close enough! Long have I known a glory in it all, But never knew I this; Here such a passion is As stretcheth me apart,—Lord, I do fear Thou’st made the world too beautiful this year; My soul is all but out of me,—let fall No burning leaf; prithee, let no bird call.

The goldfish in my bowl turns into a carp each night. Swimming in circles in the day, regal, admired by emperors, but each night, while I sleep, it turns into silver, a dagger cold and sharp, couched at one spot, enough to frighten cats. The rest of the furniture squats in the cold and dark, complains of being a lone man’s furnishings, and plots a revolt. I can hear myself snore, but not their infidelity. Sometimes I wake with a start; silently they move back into their places. I have been unpopular with myself, pacing in my small, square room. But my uncle said, “Even in a palace, you can but sleep in one room.” With this I become humble as a simple preacher, saying, “I have no powers; they emanate from God.” With this I sleep soundly, Fish or no fish, dagger or no dagger. When I wake, my fish is gold, it pleases me with a trail of bubbles. My furniture has been loyal all night, waiting to provide me comfort. There was no conspiracy against a poor man. With this I consider myself king.

Gone then risen Milk dawn gone then risen Our ephemeral fawning done Gone sanguine then risen in spell High with your wrist while nihil busy Unburrowing dice teams from sand figurines Risen to swirl steam scooping passing seemingly A kindred-ided up and up, born of dormant corners Forms filial then filled          Goes mourn and swoon Love have and love loom                    Union and risen

From a distance, at night, they seem to be industries—all lit up but not on the map; or, in this scientific age, they could be installations for launching rocket ships— so solid, and with such security, are they. . . Ah, but up close, by the light of day, we see, not “pads” but actual paddies— for these are simply silos in ricefields, structures to hold the harvested grain. Still, they're the tallest things around, and, by night or day, you'd have to say they're ample for what they do: storage. And, if you amble around from your car, you can lean up against one in the sun, feeling warmth on your cheek as you spread out your arms, holding on to the whole world around you, to the shores of other lands where the laborers launched their lives to arrive and plant and harvest this grain of history—as you hold and look, look up, up, up, and whisper: “Grandfather!”

I grow in places others can’t, where wind is high and water scant. I drink the rain, I eat the sun; before the prairie winds I run. I see, I sprout, I grow, I creep, and in the ice and snow, I sleep. On steppe or veld or pampas dry, beneath the grand, enormous sky, I make my humble, bladed bed. And where there’s level ground, I spread.

I drive past him each day in the swamp where he stands on one leg, hunched as if dreaming of his own form the surface reflects. Often I nearly forget to turn left, buy fish and wine, be home in time to cook and chill. Today the bird stays with me, as if I am moving through the heron’s dream to share his sky or water—places he will rise into on slow flapping wings or where his long bill darts to catch unwary frogs. I’ve seen his slate blue feathers lift him as dangling legs fold back, I’ve seen him fly through the dying sun and out again, entering night, entering my own sleep. I only know this bird by a name we’ve wrapped him in, and when I stand on my porch, fish in the broiler, wine glass sweating against my palm, glint of sailboats tacking home on dusky water, I try to imagine him slowly descending to his nest, wise as he was or ever will be, filling each moment with that moment’s act or silence, and the evening folds itself around me.

In Homer, the gods take the place of consciousness. For me, it is birds. Gray gulls seen from above, a tan and white pigeon bringing amoral intelligence to the balcony wall. Geoff says they are really getting tough on birds in Brighton. Bringing in a bylaw. I remember his balcony it’s really just the roof of the room downstairs but when you climb out the window you get a view of the sea and the ferris wheel which I believe is gone, or going it was an eyesore all the locals said though I — of course — thought it was wonderful and the burned-down pier out in the water.

Did wind and wave design the albatross's wing, honed compliances: or is it effrontery to suggest that the wing designed the gales and seas: are we guests here, then, with all the gratitude and soft-walking of the guest: provisions and endurances of riverbeds, mountain shoulders, windings through of tulip poplar, grass, and sweet-frosted foxgrape: are we to come into these and leave them as they are: are the rivers in us, and the slopes, ours that the world's imitate, or are we mirrorments merely of a high designing aloof and generous as a host to us: what would become of us if we declined and staked out a level affirmation of our own: we wind the brook into our settlement and husband the wind to our sails and blades: what is to be grateful when let alone to itself, as for a holiday in naturalness: the albatross, ah, fishes the waves with a will beyond the waves' will, and we, to our own doings, put down the rising of sea or mountain slope: except we do not finally put it down: still, till the host appears, we'll make the masters here.

Eight stars make A soft solfege Above this motel Where there are never Stars. I let a skinny man Put his long thick dick in me for you So we could break our hearts The way you want me to. Somewhere a white Wall stretches up behind the backs of a tribe Whose obscurity protects its secret from the common World and the connivances it ordains. What time is it. What season is it. I don’t know. The moon blows green Gas into my skull I want to hide what I dream In a big boot, and wear the boot And starve as I lean upon the boot of my destitution And drag The truth as a gimp would drag the weight of her body. That would give me a feeling of honesty.