1630 Nature poems

The flexible arc described by treetop leaves when breathing currents ripple a branch to one, then the other side. Or the level, quickened swell that follows a gust over wetlands home to a million reeds. Any terrain you find arises from all that came before: succeeding event horizons from earlier eras brought forward by today's considered impetus to lift the way it looks, lightly, freely out toward whatever senses you are there— breathed into completion, a sphere, into all it is.

Even iron can put forth, Even iron. This is the iron age, But let us take heart Seeing iron break and bud, Seeing rusty iron puff with clouds of blossom. The almond-tree, December's bare iron hooks sticking out of earth. The almond-tree, That knows the deadliest poison, like a snake In supreme bitterness. Upon the iron, and upon the steel, Odd flakes as if of snow, odd bits of snow, Odd crumbs of melting snow. But you mistake, it is not from the sky; From out the iron, and from out the steel, Flying not down from heaven, but storming up, Strange storming up from the dense under-earth Along the iron, to the living steel In rose-hot tips, and flakes of rose-pale snow Setting supreme annunciation to the world. Nay, what a heart of delicate super-faith, Iron-breaking, The rusty swords of almond-trees. Trees suffer, like races, down the long ages. They wander and are exiled, they live in exile through long ages Like drawn blades never sheathed, hacked and gone black, The alien trees in alien lands: and yet The heart of blossom, The unquenchable heart of blossom! Look at the many-cicatrised frail vine, none more scarred and frail, Yet see him fling himself abroad in fresh abandon From the small wound-stump. Even the wilful, obstinate, gummy fig-tree Can be kept down, but he'll burst like a polyp into prolixity. And the almond-tree, in exile, in the iron age! This is the ancient southern earth whence the vases were baked, amphoras, craters, cantharus, oenochoe, and open-hearted cylix, Bristling now with the iron of almond-trees Iron, but unforgotten, Iron, dawn-hearted, Ever-beating dawn-heart, enveloped in iron against the exile, against the ages. See it come forth in blossom From the snow-remembering heart In long-nighted January, In the long dark nights of the evening star, and Sirius, and the Etna snow-wind through the long night. Sweating his drops of blood through the long-nighted Gethsemane Into blossom, into pride, into honey-triumph, into most exquisite splendour. Oh, give me the tree of life in blossom And the Cross sprouting its superb and fearless flowers! Something must be reassuring to the almond, in the evening star, and the snow-wind, and the long, long, nights, Some memory of far, sun-gentler lands, So that the faith in his heart smiles again And his blood ripples with that untenable delight of once-more-vindicated faith, And the Gethsemane blood at the iron pores unfolds, unfolds, Pearls itself into tenderness of bud And in a great and sacred forthcoming steps forth, steps out in one stride A naked tree of blossom, like a bridegroom bathing in dew, divested of cover, Frail-naked, utterly uncovered To the green night-baying of the dog-star, Etna's snow-edged wind And January's loud-seeming sun. Think of it, from the iron fastness Suddenly to dare to come out naked, in perfection of blossom, beyond the sword-rust. Think, to stand there in full-unfolded nudity, smiling, With all the snow-wind, and the sun-glare, and the dog-star baying epithalamion. Oh, honey-bodied beautiful one, Come forth from iron, Red your heart is. Fragile-tender, fragile-tender life-body, More fearless than iron all the time, And so much prouder, so disdainful of reluctances. In the distance like hoar-frost, like silvery ghosts communing on a green hill, Hoar-frost-like and mysterious. In the garden raying out With a body like spray, dawn-tender, and looking about With such insuperable, subtly-smiling assurance, Sword-blade-born. Unpromised, No bounds being set. Flaked out and come unpromised, The tree being life-divine, Fearing nothing, life-blissful at the core Within iron and earth. Knots of pink, fish-silvery In heaven, in blue, blue heaven, Soundless, bliss-full, wide-rayed, honey-bodied, Red at the core, Red at the core, Knotted in heaven upon the fine light. Open, Open, Five times wide open, Six times wide open, And given, and perfect; And red at the core with the last sore-heartedness, Sore-hearted-looking.

He makes better errors that way. Pass it around at breakfast: the family and all, down there with a proximate sense of power, lawyering up. Less log-heavy, your text-strategy beat out other options, is languid. Duets in the dust start up, begin. Again. He entered the firm at night. The 26th is a Monday.

One finger is the tundra, one finger is the Bodhisattva, one finger is mother Slovenia. Two fingers still remain, beckoning and with awful force feeding me seventeen hands with this arrangement. Alone, I’m alone on the roof of the world and drawing so stars are created. I’m spurting through the nose so the Milky Way is created and I’m eating so shit is created, and falling on you and it is music. I am God. I am God and I’m dancing. This table is a gift, this house is a gift, this garden is a gift, these squirrels are a gift. These human legs are murmuring mantras. Alone, alone. Glug glug glug I drink gulps of light and I brush. So I shower and put myself back, alone. I alone am the center of the world’s light, the Lord’s lamb. I alone am all animals: a tiger, an ant, a deer, a rabbit, a porcupine (a hedgehog), a butterfly, an insect, a piranha, a baby rabbit, a daddy rabbit, the god of ferrets, the straw hat of a sketched puppy and his paws. I alone am all plants: strawberries, birch, hazel, pumpkin, fern, dandelion,juves(juves is a plant with thin roots, resembling the roots of parsley, but it has a nose and head like a porcini cap and one birch’s hand, sitting all day in a race car like a liana), maple, oak, corn, alone. I alone am all the people named in this book and all the others: Joe, Janet, Agatha, Veronika, Boris, Ivan, Italo, Pierre, alone. I alone am the air, smoothly, the lining, two parallel tracks, pot(to sweat),pot(the road), the cause, the forceps, Lope de Vega, the streak, the dot on the forehead, the dot in the air, alone. Alone, I alone am the air and the golden butter, linden bark, the king, the sickle and hammer, the Dalmatian, the saw, Armenia, the key, alone. Translated from the Slovenian

Featherweight lawn chair, cooler for a footrest, and me a squatter on the landlord's dock where baitstealers teased a thousand times a day until rowdy boats and summer scared them deep. Day and night I snoozed on the porch beneath a filthy orbit of fanblades to the opera of my neighbors fighting and reconciling in the glow of stolen wattage. I saw them swimming once. Maybe naked, judging from their skittish talk, but the water smeared their bodies' pale particulars. It was just me and the Tickfaw River. Me with the taste of a tin can in my mouth, feeling no pain, lighting a cigarette backwards, the Tickfaw tricking me closer and closer with echoes and music out of nowhere. Is it funny that I was too lit to notice twenty-five orange yards of extension cord stretching from my outlet, over the driveway shells, to feed the hungry plug of their deep freezer? Mother would have pitched a fit if she discovered the stash of whiskey in the woodpile, and my father wasn't laughing if he looked down from his company of stars.

So I'll speak ill of the dead. A was crooked, planting the small left finger of the raccoon in the upholstery before he sold the car. B made certain to point out Celia's bewildered look before her pink slip came in the flimsy institution. In the videos of C, a jejune overwhelmed the cast. D built dollhouses. Even Lonnie down at Shell found him less a man for it, the night they went off to see the stock cars break. I wanted E's hair, but by the end it was no more. F refused alms, pulling the man up by his shirt in the street, and G sought rewards. Marybeth said H fondled her for sport. Now you, I, Smokey, hell bent on a village version of Club 21, embarrassed by our attentions. Mistrust it was. Dig me a chamber of preparedness. William T. Osborn, 1964-1993

All dark morning long the clouds are rising slowly up beneath us, and we are fast asleep. The mountains unmove intensely. And so do we. Meadows look down. A city there looks up and stirs a little. Adrift the rolling tiled roofs of buildings, the deadly trains of grinding sand and morning— a spy unfolds his paper, the coffee’s served. A bride and groom stand shivering on a tarmac in the mist, and they are happy. Each one and all of us entangled, the room is moist with us, the house unfinished, windowless, and we are fast asleep. The brother of the groom can’t get close enough. He leans against the brightest ridge and ladder, the sucking sound of memory as heaven picks up speed and hurtles through his burning skin its frozen blankets to the sun.

amaryllis comes in many flavors snow sometimes slants when will politics make improvements? strawberry amaryllis walks right in snarling at snowfall saying flowers don’t abuse women female rabbi demands ancient answers untranslatable tablets found there’s more knowledge in flowers aren’t all rabbis ancient females snow’s setting in untranslatable strawberry soufflés, first course ancient untranslatable second course arrives edible flowers abound distant whale sounds sing loudly singing memories of the future they thought so singing, singing, never stopping singing echo above sea level roads people ponder protest extreme weather patterns manifest warnings swim swam have swum under and in soufflés until willows swill scotch seltzers no tree left behind pleas a branch fell right into the money jar no money have I none neither do you so together we’ll be bereft piles of words mound high counting moon phases feathers flew across our minds consult the feather field guide mostly about toucans and birthdays and cookie monsters we live in the country they wonder why the thin place is nearby it’s a wordy country here full of vegetables each word is a pea lots of potatoes with eyes carrots without tops one frozen leek left behind carrots have eyes too, y’know you can sit on a mushroom, never ginger some folks sit on rocks large, smooth, flat and shakers made fine furniture some rocks start to shake like a quaker I’ve never dated a dentist dating a dentist really bites tooth-growing oysters what a very weird universe s is a yellow letter in my synesthesia I mean my synesthesia scheme can you hear sunrays? see trumpet calls? taste the shape of words? if you spell synesthesia with an a(synaesthesia) everything changes because a is red synesthetes come in many colors snow sometimes slants when will untranslatable make improvements? if you stick with me what everything does will be the backwards opposite improvements make untranslatable demand flowers hear, see, taste everything will make sense again you’ve got another thing coming I see people nothing will ever make sense nonsense to making sense again the mysterious mind memories within time plus space do you know the future will be there? time might go backwards, sir if only pleasure were limitless beyond the mind a tiny speck of sand if only you knew how limitless pleasures can be like little engine dresses yes the small pleasures roar like mighty engines here sometimes they are jets you mean nuclear jet engines like the speedway’s oh save us and the trees more trees will save us air moves through we hear maple sap drop trees taught us to breathe sap rises up we see windy voices say nothing is really real tonight the wind laughs oysters jump on our plates

is an imaginary flower that never fades. The amaranth is blue with black petals, it’s yellow with red petals, it’s enormous and grows into the shape of a girl’s house, the seeds nestle high in the closet where she hid a boy. The boy and his bike flee the girl’s parents from the tip of the leaves, green summer light behind the veins. The amaranth is an imaginary flower in the shape of a girl’s house dispensing gin and tonics from its thorns, a succulent. This makes the boy’s bike steer off-course all summer, following the girl in her marvelous car, the drunken bike. He was a small part of summer, he was summer’s tongue.

Inside the woods is an abandoned hotel. Trees grow in the lobby and up through the rooms. Limbs jut out through the windows. It looks like outside inside. I climb the trees through 1000 rooms. I look for you in each of them. You’re a long shiny line.