1630 Nature poems

The body wicks away its nest, leaves sediment. In salt the silhouette of a wolf or a sheepshead. Who knows who steals bones if  not the connoisseur of  bones, and who drops a crank behind the body if  not the one who drains the river bed? In unrest, buzzards. Or a flat line. The probability of  sparrows a spark between two enemy pistons. A dirigible built solely for the grave.

Sweet poet of the woods, a long adieu! Farewell soft mistrel of the early year! Ah! ’twill be long ere thou shalt sing anew, And pour thy music on the night’s dull ear. Whether on spring thy wandering flights await, Or whether silent in our groves you dwell, The pensive muse shall own thee for her mate, And still protect the song she loves so well. With cautious step the love-lorn youth shall glide Through the lone brake that shades thy mossy nest; And shepherd girls from eyes profane shall hide The gentle bird who sings of pity best: For still thy voice shall soft affections move, And still be dear to sorrow and to love!

I ran into the afterlife. No fluffy white clouds. Not even stars. Only sky dark as the inside of a movie theater at three in the afternoon and getting bigger all the time, expanding at terrific speed over the car which was disappearing, flattening out empty as the fields on either side. It was impossible to think under that rain louder than engines. I turned off the radio to listen, let my head fill up until every bone was vibrating—sky. Twice, trees of lightning broke out of the asphalt. I could smell the highway burning. Long after, saw blue smoke twirling behind the eyeballs, lariats doing fancy rope tricks, jerking silver dollars out of the air, along with billiard cues, ninepins. I was starting to feel I could drive forever when suddenly one of those trees was right in front of me. Of course, I hit it— branches shooting stars down the windshield, poor car shaking like a dazed cow. I thought this time for sure I was dead so whatever was on the other side had to be eternity. Saw sky enormous as nowhere. Kept on driving.

Recalcitrant elephants begin to attack. The angry young males of murdered mothers. Any Martian could see it how we did it The historian of   the future is amazed. So much feeling once in so many bodies. But maybe they were different didn’t think or feel that much

Whirl up, sea— whirl your pointed pines, splash your great pines on our rocks, hurl your green over us, cover us with your pools of fir.

Like columns of mist in some temple to a vanished god, the late cloud-stacks mass over a June reduced to the sickly greens of the Norfolk broads; and, above the steam-soiled mess where earthworms grovel, where lumpish toads set up the resistances of grace, where badgers undermine the tarred road, I watch the canvas of that underpainted sky through a jellied glass of vermouth while the gravestone crops up and an oily wind steels itself to the south. There certain winged creatures from a century misplaced on shelves take the day down with a moaning chant known to themselves.

The Glass Frogs you can't see us not like those golden frogs flashing their beauty because we're not here pretend we're not here you can't eat us we'd taste like clear air we're transparent invisible until night when stars pass through us moonlight flows into us we start to sing we need to sing we love to sing sing sing sing

The screamer sleeps, inside. The desert's wide awake: the mouse, the rattlesnake. I've come out here to hide, behind our house, below the riddled sky, afraid of what our bodies made. To the south: Mexico... These are the nights men run. Guaymas before midday, a beach-town life...I play it out. Such things are done. The Rincons seep like a stain into the paling east. The borders are policed. The wail, nearby, of a train.

Did a big brain       raise us into mountains to range over the valley, to see the approach     before whoever it was     knew they would walk a path between dusk & dawn half-awake? An eye squinted, & sex as idea made the lids dance. Now, the brain pauses     on the edge of ascension or surrender, one sleepy hand pointing at a totem, & the other weighing a stick or jagged stone.

Yes, your face like asphalt dust on my tongue whenever it rains. I’ll say it’s the last time I call, tomorrow. In your arms it won’t be the same, each step farther from the border. Gin and tonics. Tequila grapefruits. I threw that black mug at your face after gin, after tequila, I didn’t know Enrique’s Journey would trigger me, I’m sorry. I drank too much. I drink too much, yes, I know. It wasn’t me who threw it, I said, but it was. It’s me who needs to learn how to face grandpa’s bullet shells, bottles, broken chairs, doors he woke us up with. I was four. I saw Mom between his gun and Grandma. I was four. I need to forgive the coins he placed in my hands to buy him vodka. Grandpa chased every single one of his daughters with his machete in the middle of the day, in the middle of the night, I didn’t know what to do except climb the water tower across the street with Red Power Ranger. He’s chased us to this country that trained him to stay quiet when “his boss” put prisoners in black bags, then pushed them out the truck, “for everyone to see what happens to bad people here.” Gin, straight up. Tequila shots. I’ve picked up the shards in our apartment, wiped the black smudge next to our bed, promised never to do it again, that I’ll seek help, but I don’t. I make an excuse. No one understands why Abuelita never left him. It’s mid-June, Venus and Mars the closest they’ve been in 2,000 years, but I’ve never seen grandparents hug, or hold hands. I make an excuse. You kept rubbing your hands. When I turned six grandpa quit drinking. He stayed at home at night but never talked to us. He didn’t like gin. Didn’t like writers. Didn’t like leftists. Everyone gone except one aunt. You’re not here. Tomorrow, tampoco. These walls snore like grandpa’s slurred shouts. I thought the border would take him. All my aunts, my mom, thought so too. We’re all running from the sun on his machete. The moon on his gun.