Make a place to sit down.
Sit down. Be quiet.
You must depend upon
affection, reading, knowledge,
skill—more of each
than you have—inspiration,
work, growing older, patience,
for patience joins time
to eternity. Any readers
who like your poems,
doubt their judgment.
ii
Breathe with unconditional breath
the unconditioned air.
Shun electric wire.
Communicate slowly. Live
a three-dimensioned life;
stay away from screens.
Stay away from anything
that obscures the place it is in.
There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.
iii
Accept what comes from silence.
Make the best you can of it.
Of the little words that come
out of the silence, like prayers
prayed back to the one who prays,
make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came.
The thread in the hand of a kind mother
Is the coat on the wanderer's back.
Before he left she stiched it close
In secret fear that he would be slow to return.
Who will say that the inch of grass in his heart
Is gratitude enough for all the sunshine of spring?
When the hot yellow sun wore
a colorless hole in the eastern sky
I made my way
again to the station
where teams of waiting journeyman
plugged the ticket machine
with nicotine stained forefingers.
On track number two
the 341 will roll out of the mist
to a sun-baked asphalt yard
tagged with plundered refuse
on board its unwelcoming platform
like a tarantula to a desert boulder
numbed motionless by that identical sun
On track number two
the intersection bell rings
a tune of returning gadgets
like a big bass drum
squared to the vibraphone
of slender coiled and heated tracks
two by two, out to eternity.
Suddenly I am a son of the link
I am strangely at home
Me, the scion of this hour
configuring awkward words to fit
the glazed and deafening contours
of high car to straight line
and straight line to back car.
Yes, the straight line
all the way to San Bernardino
where the earlier sun with godless effort
topped the impossible world
revealing a Euclidean rupture
where this train now ventures
a doppler shift in the ruddy smog.
My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird —
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.
Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,
which is mostly standing still and learning to be
astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all ingredients are here,
which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
that we live forever.
He lifts his own breasts in comparison.
His sister has recently gone down the hairy road to puberty and now he's twelve he thinks it's his turn.
But where are his boobs?
He was totally expecting them, kind of relieved now--
he wasn't looking forward to having to wear a bra like she said he would have to do.
She's going to have to answer to this one, he thinks. She mustn't tease him so much. She'll be sorry...
as a poet should I have the skill to string my words together
and rhyme them with blue
should I be able to give them rhythm like a well played guitar
strumming my vowels of thought to a beat
with meanings that grasp you by the guts
twist you down onto your knees
and then is it still a poem
or is it a prayer
of a soul needing to be saved
from the devils of the world
of the mind
and the devil that is made up of "I"
I am not very good at rhyming with blue
and I can't hold a rhythm beyond the basic rocking of a child
and instead of you being brought to your knees
it is I clenching my guts with my words losing meaning
and yes, I am full of devils and ghost
random thoughts I'm not able to string together
am I still a poet
when I can't even write down my name
for here the waters call to Virginia Woolf
and to Ingrid Jonker
as Sylvia Plath forgets to bake a cake...
do I really want to know what drove them
as it vibrates beneath my hands
into the shadows of my thoughts
to feel so much
I really honestly should learn to be still
and replace my thinking with well worn passages that are safe
written by folks that have reached old age
anything but the passions of the lost
I don't have to write
stay up all night
yet here I am
Leo, if this is your sick idea of a joke...This is obscene!
Wow! Won't the kids be surprised...Phil! Ruthie! Come look at you old man!
(on phone) Is it an emergency? It's an ASSAULT! Hurry! Hurry!
(DR) Is this someone's idea of a joke? This is a perfectly normal two-year old.
He's not! He's not! He's my husband!
Daddy! I need my father! I need my father! I want my father back! I want to die! I want to vomit!
(DR) I've got four strep throats and a marrow cancer waiting. You people should be shot!
Let's play! Ruthie, want to carry Daddy piggy back? Do me a favor, Carol, powder and diaper me.
Leo, you are having too good a time at your family's expense.
I'm going to jump out the window!
Phil, Ruthie, I have had quite enough of this! It's time you children faced the real world, unblinking. I your father, have reverted to two. That happens to be my private and personal choice. I will love and suppport you every bit as strongly as when I was middle-aged. That's all that matters as far as you're concerned. My age is MY business, not yours. NOW CARRY ME PIGGY BACK!
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