potential danger with witch-friends




of all the witches i know

i might suspect

that one of them unknowing

could keep me in her curses

when she meant me for her prayers

you say your mind
has been far from your body
connected by a long thin thread
and that everything is light or flowing

my mind has been
stuck in my heels
there are no connections

no one wants to be
an old shoe

and your hands are becoming
far too beautiful to look at, only

long ago mother and father
walked in the woods
on a morning like this
and the poppies bloomed





i'm told the house
was filled with light
and the lilac smelled
as sweetly as it did this noon





Vega was the first star to rise
and the light it made
the evening i was born
just now reached my eye

all the dayrise the mewling of
the "small bird of the thornbushes"

a fine mist gives a pillow-light
for the early cottontails

an oriole makes love thoroughly
to the freshly flowering quince

i might just leave
before the lilac does!

in the house alone

    behest of morning
    to stay in the hammock
    far past the first grey light

who is it that whispers me awake?

    vows of morning
    mean little
    at sundown

and the new moon on mayday

    westering

each day i let the same trapped
dark-eyed junco
out the barn loft window


i will no longer ask you the reasons why

the hermit to himself



leave the rake out in the garden
you'll be there tomorrow

speak only with your father
or else let the house its silence

rest in the myrtle by the dogwood
while the birds are quiet

in the first heat of the year,
the sun will let you

forget love for a while

sit with your cloud-eyed mangy cat
she's a better hermit than you'll ever be

walk to the swamp and stop by the pine to
collect rodent teeth from its resident owl

go lightly into the evening
with a head full of flowers

to give to your oldest friend;
old beckoner, sleep.

To have every bird in the woods

finally sing and I am known to it

is all the morning I ask

To see the flower garden

move as a dress on your body

is all the day I ask

To have the stars rise from the river

and you not think of me as crazy

has to be the night ahead

Bob Arnold

Longhouse

in the sudden spring cold
that shrivels the magnolia blooms
the stones gather day warmth
and pass it to my hands

sun shines through
a black shafted
blue jay feather
stuck in the braid

i return to joy