the longest dusk


the light's become so
good at lingering
~westlight backshining
   the ridge trees, slowly

at this hour

buzzards wheel
to find perch in particular limbs,
flap noisily, settle and become another shadow

squirrels make ways back
to their cluster-nests for
the evening and crows
above say,

"go home!"

they dare not caw when
the owls wake to hunt

the wind keeps pushing the mountain;
dry grasses lay down on the flanks of Barnabe




     of all the ways to see it
     i keep coming back to the wind

     when you sit out until
     all we think of as still commences
     quivering in the subtle dusk
     there is no way of saying exactly
     when the night begins

i long for the cool dimness
of morning when the sky
is the suggestion of light
and everything appears
to be inhaling

what is it that
desires this attention?
surely not the worn body
or the mind all soft
in the warm bath of dream

that i rise from bed-heat
into chilly grey air to sit
with nothing but the
flower of day
--the soul must exist

should it not follow winter that
i wake my body in the springtime?

i want everything i do to be
a walking into a cold river

i choose to believe i keep
the sunlight that torches my skin

could it be that we are accumulations
of the wind and history?

a gust the size of galaxies
still moving the tiniest leaves

coincidences are just the
enormous wind remembering itself

coincidentally what passes thru my ears
the hawk considers its keenest tool

it is summer and my body, awake
is an accumulation of all the sun that's blown

it is the function of time to rearrange
familiar things until they are unrecognizable

i cannot remember something;
just the wind forgetting itself

drunk, alone in a strangers cabin


am i alone?
i feel as though

i know people
i have never met

is not every star
and fir-needle here

for me to be with
silently, as they are?

its as though
the moon was made

for us sad, pleased hermits
in our cold, perfect beds

from the "for a moment" series




for a moment
on the train
the slanted-mouth
woman and i
shared the inherent
beauty of stars

the blooming forsythia
passing by
acknowledged this

                                     for a moment

                                     i was unsure

                                     whether the falling tide

                                     was not the water receding

                                     so much as the earth

                                     rising from it

for a moment
i saw a meadow
thru the trees

coming closer
what was a meadow
was the shining buckeye flowers

exuding light before
the sun had even risen








                                     for a moment
                                     there was quiet
                                     where there had been birds

                                     the sun passed by