1630 Nature poems

As a fond mother, when the day is o'er, Leads by the hand her little child to bed, Half willing, half reluctant to be led, And leave his broken playthings on the floor, Still gazing at them through the open door, Nor wholly reassured and comforted By promises of others in their stead, Which, though more splendid, may not please him more; So Nature deals with us, and takes away Our playthings one by one, and by the hand Leads us to rest so gently, that we go Scarce knowing if we wish to go or stay, Being too full of sleep to understand How far the unknown transcends the what we know.

1981, &  for three days in Nebraska penny loafers are the talk, the thirties sensation all over again in one-light towns. Three days in Nebraska, &  a hundred calves come out bloody &   new as Wahoo &  Alma &  Dunning hum &  glow, turned liked searchlights into Colorado, where everyone’s already wearing their lucky shoes. It takes just one look at a boy from Ansley— there is love &  there is money &  there is everything in between, touched by both— one look at the packs approaching the drag in Imperial, as first &  second boy say hey & hey to third &  fourth— Three days in Nebraska, &  the bigger the sentiment, the harder it falls, &    all over the dreams of the pretty end somewhere in New York City, but just this one time, just these three days in Nebraska, the boys are clicking their boots &  singing I wish I was here in Nebraska

La luna Sang the miles por los palos de Nebraska You bunch of lights And houses    How did you walk to this place Buffalo Bill Better know him some Spanish Para Horses    ride rubber horseshoes moderno. El café Boiled water/no milk in sight. Homes that will travel interstate 8 o tomorrow in the morning for the next edge of town. The cowgirls/the local rodeo As they galloped by their hair unmoved by 15 miles per hour wind It seems that 25 pounds of hair spray is enough to hold a mountain down Their hair style longer than their faces. Que Pasa? Y los palos do not feel at home any more La luna goes round the star dotted cielo Let’s watch In this part of Mexico Se habla inglish.

It wasn’t until we got the Christmas tree into the house and up on the stand that our daughter discovered a small bird’s nest tucked among its needled branches. Amazing, that the nest had made it all the way from Nova Scotia on a truck mashed together with hundreds of other trees without being dislodged or crushed. And now it made the tree feel wilder, a balsam fir growing in our living room, as though at any moment a bird might flutter through the house and return to the nest. And yet, because we’d brought the tree indoors, we’d turned the nest into the first ornament. So we wound the tree with strings of lights, draped it with strands of red beads, and added the other ornaments, then dropped two small brass bells into the nest, like eggs containing music, and hung a painted goldfinch from the branch above, as if to keep them warm.

I walked out, and the nest was already there by the step.  Woven basket of a saint sent back to life as a bird who proceeded to make a mess of things.  Wind right through it, and any eggs long vanished.  But in my hand it was intricate pleasure, even the thorny reeds softened in the weave.  And the fading leaf mold, hardly itself anymore, merely a trick of light, if light can be tricked.  Deep in a life is another life.  I walked out, the nest already by the step.

The rooks are cawing  up and down the trees! Among their nests they caw. O sound I treasure, Ripe as old music is, the summer's measure, Sleep at her gossip, sylvan mysteries, With prate and clamour to give zest of these— In rune I trace the ancient law of pleasure, Of love, of all the busy-ness of leisure, With dream on dream of never-thwarted ease. O homely birds, whose cry is harbinger Of nothing sad, who know not anything Of sea-birds' loneliness, of Procne's strife, Rock round me when I die! So sweet it were To die by open doors, with you on wing Humming the deep security of life.

Poised on a bridge, streetlights on either shore, a man puts a saxophone to his lips, coins in an upturned cap, and a carousel in a piazza begins to turn: where are the gates to paradise? A woman leans over an outstretched paper cup — leather workers sew under lamps: a belt, wallet, purse — leather dyed maroon, beige, black — workers from Seoul, Lagos, Singapore — a fresco on a church wall depicts the death of a saint: a friar raises both hands in the air — on an airplane, a clot forms in a woman’s leg and starts to travel toward her heart — a string of notes riffles the water; and, as the clot lodges, at a market near lapping waves, men unload sardines in a burst of argentine light.

Into this net of leaves, green as old glass That the sun fondles, trembling like images In water, this live net, swung overhead From branch to branch, what swam? The spider’s thread Is less passive, where it appears to float Like a bright hair clinging to the wind’s coat. Hot at work, history neither schemes nor grieves Here where the soaking dead are last year’s leaves, And over them slung, meshed with sun, a net No creature wove, none frantically tried to fret. The huge weight of time without its sting Hangs in that greenly cradling woof. A wing Has caught there, held. Held. But not to stay, We know, who, how slowly, walk away.

1 When the loons cry, The night seems blacker, The water deeper. Across the shore: An eyelash-charcoal Fringe of pine trees. 2 The lake reflects Indefinite pewter, And intermittent thunder Lets us know The gods are arriving, One valley over. 3 After the long Melancholy of the fall, One longs for the crisp Brass shout of winter— The blaze of firewood, The window’s spill Of parlor lamplight Across the snow. 4 Flaring like a match Dropped in a dry patch, One sunset tells The spectrum’s story. See the last hunter’s Flashlight dim As he hurries home To his lighted window.

I move my hands in these woods to find her sex-parts. We discover our sex-parts make heat and blue light. We become outlines of ourselves— long scratches in the sky. We have a daughter who was never born. She lives in the house we never built, but in this new light, you can almost see its tattered roof.