Copyright 1998
cover illustration by Mike Wolfe
I
The Moonsong Round I sing to you
This day become as night
As sudden crickets harmonize
In deep twilight.
In the orchard old as
old
As bent by happenstance
Do I defy advancing stars:
Observe my stance!
Clip the cloth
ephemeral
Upon your secrecy,
Penumbra at the why
Of pungent mystery.
II
Who never heard the
Magpie,
Black as heart's despair,
Wringing lamentations from
The bitter Winter's air?
III
Snow in a low, blue
valley,
Sparkling distantly,
Invokes the dawn of purest hope;
Star of the Morning, I see.
IV
The girl I saw went
lazily
And made a meandering track,
A beauty in a pilgrim's habit
Toting a burlap sack.
Tell me, therefore, is this world
Your treadmill, wandering girl?
Oceans travel it all to find
A solitary pearl.
She stored her lentils
in a jar
That sagged the bottom of her bag.
I wondered that her stubborn chin
Had yet to sag.
Her brown hair wound
about her head;
A wisp untangled free.
The mirror of a man, I saw,
Myself reflected back at me.
V
Winter with the sheets
pulled back,
A fluctuating chill
Arouses every sleeper
When the growing spell is still.
VI
The noises of the
world
Are sweet and clear.
I hear the Starling singing
At my ear.
And I'm a married man
But feel no dread.
I see the Robin Redbreast
Near my bed.
In the little while
I'm here,
With His own eyes I see.
The Magpie cheers
With me.
VII
My little cat took
sick and died;
He fought to the bitter last
Until one day I wept to see
His life had passed.
For one small soul who
leapt and lived
A mere box seems to lie;
This tattered towel is hardly the field,
These pinholes no night sky.
VIII
I do not welcome this,
The sudden slap of cold,
The clutch of frozen mist
That makes my bones feel old.
Wrapped in an arctic
shroud,
My car sits by the street
In manacles of ice
My clumsy fingers meet.
Salted trees above
Are brittle in the bud,
Their puny leaves are burnt,
Bereft of blood.
My misery is kin;
I pant in clouds my breath,
Drudging in a drift
Of incontestable depth.
IX
Horses I have known
too well
As royalty made to work
Are fitted to a tiny field
By awesome quirk.
Unfolding ages wear
away
Such sinuous perfection;
Beauty is the ghost of a chance,
Shape is fabrication.
Time there was
unfettered pastures
Counted no net worth,
A horse could, with desire, run
The whole expanse of Earth.
X
Dust to ashes, man to
woman,
Life's a necromance.
Until we're spinning in our graves
Why don't we dance?
Love, the light must
fear no darkness,
Sons of the Sun will rearrange
Star dust into crimson embers--
Set the light. Observe the change.
Arise from ash! We're
born anew,
And all consumed is whisked away;
While we embrace and kiss as lovers,
Stars are started where we lay.
XI
Go forth, Doom-sayers,
Warn the World.
Those words you gasp
Are twirled
Even while you stand
Unknowing.
Seeds swirl,
Life is growing.
Embrace your righteous
ends
But know this Earth
Prepared your life
And gave you birth.
Opine away! Your dire
words
Hold no real worth
Beside the gratitude
Of birth.
XII
Strands of web and a
broken shell
Dangle on leaves and loam;
Little Arachne has left it--
Nobody home.
XIII
Mortal Bee, in your
Machinery I detect
No broken parts or cracks
But something's wrecked.
XIV
I sing the blessed
vision
Of your sight!
Am I, your mystic craftsman,
Making light?
I speak to your
particular
Winding life:
Unwind a spell and
Hear my fife.
Purge the piffle that
is
The parson's paltry law.
Persuade yourself to
Hear my saw.
Dogma's canon
Fires a blunderbuss.
Listen--I will sing
For both of us.
XV
A face and name
remembered
Came on the crest of a song;
An angel, yet whose breath spoke gall,
I loved her far too long.
As I am a river
wanting his source
So I travel on;
Unfamiliar grows the land
As I am gone.
I make these songs to
follow,
Rippling quickly to the wide
Immortal sea anonymously
Awash in the rising tide.
And all is bleak, as
bleak
Is the way of a bootless melody.
How will she ever hear of it,
Removed from me?
XVI
Seagulls circle a
droning tractor,
Clouds of them to wing and flirt
Until, like folded napkins, do they
Perch upon the dirt.
XVII
The mover of this
Earth,
Mother of all Life,
Who came to me one morning,
Subtle as a knife,
Spoke through my
silent vacuum,
Sleep as deepest death.
A silver river filled it
From her fluent breath.
XIII
The meadows of her
hair
Like flowing rills,
I've flown my kite
Above her hills.
XIX
Beyond the well worn
path
I nudged a trail of trials;
Imagine my dismay to see
Footprints, miles and miles.
XX
A blacktop quivers in
the heat
In a field where I used to play;
Forget-me-nots are all that grow.
Spring begins this day.
The tiny things see
fit to flower,
Bursting through the broken clay,
And blue as bluest memory:
"Don't ever forget," they say.
XXI
Happy is the second
Day of Spring!
The grasses gain the wind
And sing.
I see the new
Red Robin rise.
He tells old Boreas
"Go with all that lies!"
XXII
I go the pastures of
my days
Where June grass grows as green.
Dandelions mimic the Sun:
Fiery and serene.
Robin like a fire
flows,
A crimson comet on the green.
Little Robin little knows
How fires blaze serene.
XXIII
I am a trout below the
river
Looking to the eggs
Dropped in darkness on the bottom,
Sprouting swimmers' legs.
Guide my fins and I
will swim
To come to spawn and bring
A meaning to the waving grasses
Random currents fling.
Then to the top, fast
to the top--
A shade un-stills the sky!
I flash into the other world
Snapping at a fly.
XXIV
Who own the gift of
Orpheus?
The hated I have heard
Who hail each silver day
This winter of His word.
Above these sullen
dwellings,
Starlings, unaware
How truly they prevail unto
The pristine dome of the air,
Impart their generous
joy
In languages that bring
More to the January dawn
Than all my muttering.
Huddled while He gazes
down
They sleep above the street.
When they awaken, all that lie
Awaken at their feet.
XXV
The Weber broke the
light
That broke my sleep;
I watched it while I fished
In canyon deep
And saw a trout pursue
That river's crest
To catch a mayfly,
Feathery at rest.
As Lucifer exhaled
A chilling breath
I led the predator
Before his death
And cut him on the
bank.
The day moved high
As quickly as the rise
Of trout and fly.
XXVI
Come Spring the gentle
dandelion
Shows a supple face
While underneath she seeks
A safer place.
Dandelions were my
sister
Flourishing everywhere
As dandelions were her eyes,
Her lips, her hair.
Her yellow petals
waved goodbye;
Her roots were in the ground,
While I went picking
Dandelions all around.
Multitudes resemble
her
On and in the lawn;
Weeds, the lot of them,
Here then gone.
XXVII
Mindful yet of laws
and notions
Nod your head to me
And count our similarities.
They are many.
Give a thief what he
is due;
Your honest, half a chance.
Let them hold their gratitude.
Yours, enhance.
As all are just as you
and I,
And graced as any god,
They bloom beyond all rationale
As goldenrod.
Laws and notions,
insects all,
Scramblers in a massive tree
Of numberless leaves abounding.
Count our similarities.
XXIII
Miniature songs are
these
Or a fife
I pluck from the cupboard
And whistle twice.
XXIX
Some like some.
Some like cake.
Some like much
And take
Their everlasting dues
"That sheep may safely graze..."
Coyote, he must hide,
So says
The Arbiter, his ethos,
And his arbitrary mind.
"Sleep, Jesus, sleep.
Your words, kind
"And alive. Sleep.
We'll do your work
Certain every sheep
Won't shirk."
But I'm no sheep. Then,
Jesus, take my hand
Where no one has to hide
In open land.
Anyone who's hungry
gladly
Suffers bread or cake.
A starving coyote, he
Will certainly take.
XXX
Mid-June makes
illusion green;
A hot wind bends the sky
When one can hear that ancient joke,
The Magpie's threatened cry.
XXXI
One eye still shined
as if it lived.
The coyote did not stir.
I brought the body from the grade,
A sack of bones and fur.
XXXII
Breezes through
September grain
Incite a dance of grasses,
All that you will miss, old Horse,
When hay and harness passes.
XXXIII
A host of Starlings
scattered,
Builders pushed the awkward ground.
Buzz buzz, trees
Came stumbling down.
XXXIV
Strolling above
I wander high
Unto a bowl
Of velvet sky,
And hold a star light
In my hand
I stoop to plant
Beneath the land.
Cultivate, I pray.
Arise. Arise.
Fill up these endless,
Endless skies.
Bloom and leaf,
Become a tree
Of numberless leaves,
A galaxy.
XXXV
Once, to confess, I
hated my life.
Another I knew did.
One night in a dream I saw her
Drift beside my bed.
"While I have
hated you
You ought to love, yourself.
Why deprive this tear-less world
Of all your briny wealth?
Believing I could
change for the best
I begged her shape to stay,
And saw it everywhere I looked
That waking day.
XXXVI
Stacks of books in a
hall
What quantum thoughts inspire.
Imagine it, one billion words,
One little fire.
XXXVII
I held a ridiculous
notion
To live in a deep-sea bed,
Become some scuttling crab.
How I'd misread.
No sojourn beside the
snails
Nor friend among the fish,
I squat below and gaze...up,
And I wish.
Say that I should
climb to the shoals,
See what the wild surf hurls.
But I'm on the bottom prying open
Clams in search of pearls.
XXXIII
Who is this clinging
to the nook
Afraid to ask to live?
Arachne of the field.
To her what can I give?
Arachne of the field
Where is your twig and leaf?
Unless you find your food without
Your stay with us is brief.
Are those your
starving children
Clinging to your back?
I fear that they will fare the worse
For what you lack.
I know a place where
weeds grow high.
I'll take you there to live.
Arachne of the field, much more
I don't know how to give.
XXXIX
Magpie, Magpie,
What is real?
Wings to fly?
Or an angel's appeal?
Robin, proclaim
Your connubial jest
And bring them to bear,
The worst and the best.
Starling, spend
Your penniless song
And pray that you
Will not live long.
Magpie, Magpie,
What is hope?
Wings that walk
And legs that grope.
Magpie, Magpie,
Hope is real.
Sweet dreams come
Of crumbs you steal.
XL
When all the others
have gone
In their graveyard we will play,
Magpie and I in the Autumn chill
And waning day.
And he and I will tell
sad tales
Of once majestic souls we knew,
When hand in hand to the Moonsong Round,
Like leaves they flew.
Then I'll ascend this
obelisk
Arising above these gents and dames
And read aloud in tears, my friend,
Their beautiful names.
XLI
Sunny flourish, flight
Of stars...our Dandelion,
Dispersing her seed,
Aspires to Orion.
XLII
Make our people golden;
We will do no wrong.
Misunderstandings they
Have bothered far too long.
Atlanta will,
that gem
Of cities, yield
Temples Timbuktu
Could never build.
Richmond, she'll discover
Wondrous plowers
Raising from her
Ashes, flowers.
Hybrid children,
peaceful,
Flowers bringing,
Sing. I hear them
Sweetly singing.
XLIII
What joyless sunset
met his sorrows
Hopeful Robin schemed
To re-familiarize the world
And sing it back to being.
XLIV
"Speak to
me," I begged her
In my mind,
And she replied
In kind:
"You knew that
seed comes
Of the winds that blow
Over Earth less firm
Than snow?
"You knew as well
your
Life is a road you go
Into the withered ground
Below the snow?
"And all you hold
Onto you feel
Only as this winter's
Memory is real."
She turned to vapor
and
Became the chill
Where snow lay now
Upon the window sill.
The day grew bitter as
The caustic bile
Behind her words, although
I tried to reconcile...
XLV
Death is a White Fox
in the pasture
Where the Magpie flies,
Creeping in the vaulting stems
With glittering eyes.
Life's a brown mouse
on the lam,
Energetic, filled with fear;
Within the gaze of the waiting Fox
His fate's unclear.
The Fox does not
pretend to play
What's his to take or give:
"Hop, Brown mouse. Hop fast
And I may let you live."
XLVI
The song of the day's
not partial,
Changed tongues change reply
To the echo of a ceaseless wind
That varies by and by.
Then to your wandering
places go;
They shifted under your feet.
The path you knew not long ago
Ends and is incomplete.
XLVII
Capricious Cat will
render all
As weary and as wan
As cold despair that chills the bones
When hope's own warmth is gone;
And we are bitterly
bemused
With truth that we can feel,
Yes, and what is gone forever
He, Himself can't steal.
None beguile
Capricious Cat
To stay when he's made his play
And holds in each gold, glaring eye
No other day.
XLVIII
Fair tidings, fellow
traveler,
We've left our homely land
For the sea
of Sagittarius
Beyond this mortal strand.
Stars spread past a
vast frontier
As so much scattered sand;
Boot them while you stroll along
Beyond this mortal strand.
XLVIX
Your sight goes with
me
In my mind
As leaves of incense
Intertwined.
We are as one,
together
In the earth;
The guiding fingers of the many
Made one birth.
I dream a simple
pleasure:
You and I, alive.
From this all songs
Derive.
L
Upon the abyss in
perfect poise
Oh, wandering cat's-eye, hear me cry,
To see this silver sliver of light,
That hope is no fool's lie.
LI
Lovers are a rose,
Love,
And you and I a rose;
Bloom and briar both, we live
Where His high garden grows.
And where His river
flows, Love,
A single flower grows;
Plume and fire both, it is
His first, His favorite rose.
LII
A vacant house there
was still stood
When centuries passed away,
Overgrown the founding stones
Of ancient clay.
A silver moth moved
like a ghost
Aflutter in the halls
And found therein a vermin's brood
In secrecy behind the walls.
Saplings swelled to
sycamores,
Pillars to the sky,
Capillaries on the iris
Of the wandering eye.
Leaves that fell this
Autumn last
Were marionettes alive
Who, through the puppeteering
wind
Were made to strive.
