1630 Nature poems

When over the flowery, sharp pasture’s edge, unseen, the salt ocean lifts its form—chicory and daisies tied, released, seem hardly flowers alone but color and the movement—or the shape perhaps—of restlessness, whereas the sea is circled and sways peacefully upon its plantlike stem

I wonder if anyone ever thought to tell time with them     know where their shadow tipped on 3 o'clock    which floor   which parking spot from a window desk    or if they ever stood completely over their own shade's dot that moment they had no metered footprint; a peek-a-boo we now find ticketed as a before and an after    an either side of a space the zero pulls into, its long reserve wheel of nothing there. Yet here a gnomon of absence bears its shadow placement on some dial of brevity and cold about life       about the footprint we may leave empty of light    empty of even point to it. Here it's flat and densely packed with people unlike the empty open of the plain; here our expanse    the grown over dumpsite of the meadowlands wetlands or the shore is corps of engineered   the bulldozer-beetle's ball of dung shines in it       and somewhere the body hidden in our shit to fake us innocent... one of our jokes sometimes      things rise and float. We in the morning catch, from the train, in the green garbage runoff, sight of white herons and the cormorants. When they’re there in the evening, we safely assume the world hasn’t gone anywhere; a take of bearings       the same the next morning when we’d see the lit towers on the island we were headed for      we see now the hour. From the Jersey side we take a bearing, as on mountains from the vantage of the plain, on the towers from the vantage of the dirt-stiffened, unyielding, tarmac of marsh grass     gray like steel grayed a vegetable steel from blur and the exhausts of the turnpike. Position with regard to surrounding objects here is unlike in the mountains which give a bearing even from deep within them, let you see them from inside their formation. Climbing to the high plateau of the street from the subway, we check the peaks downtown or midtown    skyscrapers for direction. Walk a few doors up the block    they parallax eclipsed by the postcard we no more see. * There was a deep well lit its entire depth at noon on the solstice       light without shadow: so with an in-line position with regard to the sun       any cast line of shadow would indicate a curve; the distance between one and not,   an arc of circumference. That phrase of the psalm says death’s shadow is as deep as that valley which is our grave; its length is the same cast everywhere       as deep; no one’s is further from death than another’s; death surrounds us       is our uncurbed circumference. We map our way with only the bearing of surrounding life      itself borderless uncontrolled by the surface of our self. The bridge towers of the Verrazano are so far apart they tilt away from each other on the curve of the earth   factored in. I wonder if from the distance apart of the The Towers you could figure that reach ‘round of the world with this method of shadow? The shadow of flesh casts how deep and far a landscape of perspective?       how round a circumference enough to fit the living world   does a single life turning to its labor spin? Take each story of a building as the radius of expansion      we make of the earth, concentric spheres       on Turtle Island, the hundred ten circumferences go nova So high a reach of vision set on so short a perspective       the world on the turtle's back: at top, the wake of star formation    at base, the animal god.     the jealous Need,    a stomach of feet       trying to stand through this. What can we say of our own that stand in Newark say       so far adrift from a chance to wash      that the dirt on her feet cracks into sores the skin of her soles    and steps her in one more shit infection she has to kick, one more occupation of her body by her monkey rulers she will have to throw off into space       off her back       burned out but clear of starring habit.       Of her destroyed sun    say it endows the landfill       on which to build a new development       “We are the stuff of stars,” Sagan says.

Imagine, not even or really ever tasting a peach until well over 50, not once sympathizing with Blake naked in his garden insisting on angels until getting off the table and coming home with my new heart. How absurd to still have a body in this rainbow-gored, crickety world and how ridiculous to be given one in the first place, to be an object like an orchid is an object, or a stone, so bruisable and plummeting, arms waving from the evening-ignited lake, heading singing in the furnace feral and sweet, tears that make the face grotesque, tears that make it pure. How easy it is now to get drunk on a single whiff like a hummingbird or ant, on the laughter of one woman and who knew how much I’d miss that inner light of snow now that I’m in Texas.

The bird had come to the very end of its song and the tree was dissolving under its claws. And in the sky the clouds were twisting and darkness flowed through all the cracks into the sinking vessel of the landscape. Only in the telegraph wires a message still crackled: C-.-o---m--e. h...o---m--e. y-.--o---u..- h...a.-v...-e. a.-s...o---n-.

plantain makes a good tea. its seeds are crushed and used as a laxative. it is found in every english garden. now its leaves are pushing up everywhere. you can find it outside every english settlement, its long leaves with parallel veins, its central stocks of tiny flowers. wherever the english go plantain grows in their footsteps. when you see it you’ll know that they’re near. that english boy found his way home following those footsteps. when you see it go the other way

Evening! as slow thy placid shades descend, Veiling with gentlest hush the landscape still, The lonely battlement, the farthest hill And wood, I think of those who have no friend; Who now, perhaps, by melancholy led, From the broad blaze of day, where pleasure flaunts, Retiring, wander to the ring-dove’s haunts Unseen; and watch the tints that o’er thy bed Hang lovely; oft to musing Fancy’s eye Presenting fairy vales, where the tir’d mind Might rest beyond the murmurs of mankind, Nor hear the hourly moans of misery! Alas for man! that Hope’s fair views the while Should smile like you, and perish as they smile!

Coyote scruff in canyons off Mulholland Drive. Fragrance of sage and rosemary, now it’s spring. At night the mockingbirds ring their warnings of cats coming across the neighborhoods. Like castanets in the palms of a dancer, the palm trees clack. The HOLLYWOOD sign has a white skin of fog across it where erotic canyons hump, moisten, slide, dry up, swell, and shift. They appear impatient—to make such powerful contact with pleasure that they will toss back the entire cover of earth. She walks for days around brown trails, threading sometimes under the low branches of bay and acacia. Bitter flowers will catch her eye: pink and thin honeysuckle, or mock orange. They coat the branches like lace in the back of a mystical store. Other deviant men and women live at the base of these canyons, closer to the city however. Her mouth is often dry, her chest tight, but she is filled to the brim with excess idolatry. It was like a flat mouse—the whole of Los Angeles she could hold in the circle formed by her thumb and forefinger. Tires were planted to stop the flow of mud at her feet. But she could see all the way to Long Beach through a tunnel made in her fist. Her quest for the perfect place was only a symptom of the same infection that was out there, a mild one, but a symptom nonetheless.

In the woods off Ivory, just out of car-shot it’s not enough to say a mouse lies snug in a crib of roots, its fur sleek as babyskin, Lord the body warm. Too often a name subverts the pang it answers for, inwit of heart-light, the epiphanic clutch. I mean do you sense with more than a chill the tiny homely lumpliness of it there in the dirt as you orphan the dim of a cold October sun, no wound I can find anywhere on its, your, my small soft bodykins—yikes its left ear (the inner skin pink delicate svelte) twitches a little and I have this before thought tricks it whimsically lovely wink of the soul as mouse-force taking wing until the O-no letdown when a yellow jacket backs out, O sweetmeat funk and dandle of the brain asputter as it launches over frost-curled leaves and dollarweed seed strewn on the path like medallions glimpsed the second we— I mean all of us cold in the twilight—fly.

I leant upon a coppice gate When Frost was spectre-grey, And Winter's dregs made desolate The weakening eye of day. The tangled bine-stems scored the sky Like strings of broken lyres, And all mankind that haunted nigh Had sought their household fires. The land's sharp features seemed to be The Century's corpse outleant, His crypt the cloudy canopy, The wind his death-lament. The ancient pulse of germ and birth Was shrunken hard and dry, And every spirit upon earth Seemed fervourless as I. At once a voice arose among The bleak twigs overhead In a full-hearted evensong Of joy illimited; An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small, In blast-beruffled plume, Had chosen thus to fling his soul Upon the growing gloom. So little cause for carolings Of such ecstatic sound Was written on terrestrial things Afar or nigh around, That I could think there trembled through His happy good-night air Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew And I was unaware.

Cloud cover like a badly made bed, ruched in sections, rushed. Whatevered for reasons of a lifetime of do-overs. Why bother trying to change? The gathered duvet sometimes mimics you, makes double. Dopples a decoy. An escape plan. The safety of numbers and cover. When the wing dips, a hole in the sky revealed. Until then, a man in the aisle seat. Calculations to see if it’s possible to slide through the fisheye window if he touches your thigh again, your face. We like our planes fashioned after ships. The illusion one could jump or be forced off and possibly survive between the distance and everything that wants to live how it’s always lived. Without compromise. When does knowing a person begin? Was it when he said you look like his ex-wife? Hair naturally red, not like yours. Fake. He can tell, but it’s OK. What your children together would look like. That if you had been born in Fayetteville, he would’ve liked to have known you. Feels he does. Not like the absent husband his mind weds you to. The one who abandoned you to his company like a firing squad to its post waiting for a reason to prove worth. The moment he asked for vodka on the 53-minute flight from Charlotte to Wilmington to bridge the gap between pre- and post-flight beers. Or how he lifted his shirt to show you where his lungs had been punctured and once collapsed, he said he’d briefly died and now is, briefly, alive.