Field, Later

"What I don't know doesn't matter."

The side of the empty mountain
Looks speckled with old snow
And cows, scattered properties,

One cow so weirdly piebald
That it looks like two cows moving
In lockstep together--a white one

Behind a black one, bizarre silhouette
Unbeknownst to mountain or cow.
You can see it, see the reasoning

Lumbering ponderously down roads
Constructed for access to owners
That someone could borrow

For poems when no one cares:
If the mountain is unaware
Of the cows, and the cows are

Unaware of their weirdness there,
Then the human must be unaware
Of something or other, other

Than what it already doesn't know.
That's the kind of careful wording
Poets step in all the time, muttering

In circles made by the muttering,
Tracking themselves in the snow,
Quoting themselves, "Lo and behold,

Now I know I know all this nonsense
For three or four or more
Dimensions simply descended,

Confusion working its way down
Through mathematical conventions
Like a flash-flood cutting snow--

There are no dimensions, just one
Direction through which we fall,
And the patterns we elaborate

Are not those we perceive and are
Concealed within us, from us, always
Falling through the long-fallen all."

Field

"flockes were / imeind bi toppes & bi here"

Ok then, ask the crows mobbing the cows,
Sounding nothing like nightingales or owls,

What if our amassing and sundering
Human provisioners are wandering

In every wrong direction from themselves?
There is no space and never was. They fell

Because they couldn't tell what seemed between
Wilderness and that grey heave of the sea,

Between the forest around their gardens
And the dry hills around their fenced-in farms,

Was actually moving only one way,
Time-ward to now, never once changing place,

Never arriving or leaving at all,
Like black to a crow, like soil from the straw,

Just a change, just an exceedingly sweet,
Note-less song from the throats of all who feed

Temporary beasts of various kinds
On the happiness of devouring time,

Neither here nor there, neither brief nor long,
Presently fond of the recently gone.

I'll Say Hello to the Bees for You

"Some people can do something
And nothing," says Sequoia
Who builds straw nests in the yard

On such an abruptly warm
Late winter afternoon, I'm
As distrusting of the sun

As Sequoia's grandmother
Was distrusting of any
Good news not from the Gospels.

The Loon on Sandy Beach

In your old age, I'll have to rise
In murky waters in spite of yourself,
Your damned wild diving bird to show

You your own blue skies yourself.
Music is what we need if we want
To blame silence for this. Sorry.

I'll have no choice but
To foist my red-eyed, sleek-billed
Silhouette on your blurry eyesight.

Oh quit it, now. You won't know
What the language you collage
Even sounds like anymore

When one of your few crooners
And laughers among the literary
Ruffs and pigeon feathers croaks

Into song. Your eyes, your ears,
Our memories, if thinking
Any of this was anything

To do with me, are closing. Here's
A cry and a shot of faith
And a meditation bell. You're not

Paddling out away forever
From the last bird left mad enough
To banter of being with angels and you.

Toad Spring

~for takers and leavers alike

Let's back up
The poems or let's
Write one with index

Fingers in the damp sands
Time carries to the river.
Enough about time, already:

Existential category,
Who cares? There are no givers
Among grunting pens, sans

Freedoms. Rules index
The broken. Let's
Back poems up.

Give the Monk

Seven minutes, drunk,
Or seven months, Zen,

Or seven years, yogic,
Or seven dogs, Christian,

And then ask him
(He being someone

After all not fond
Of females as of

Dogs, desert,
Or rhyming gongs)

What he learned.
Don't be sad, you

Unbeliever, if without
Donations or devils

Behind you by dozens
Your question's spurned.

This is the rhyme born
Of assigned convictions

And gardened over
Convicts' spans of time.

A Penny Violet

A speck of the wild
Flowers that work
To be humble
And attract bumblebees

Sleeps on my knee
In a clangorous dream,
Somewhere far
From meadow stars.

A penny, a violet,
A veil that hides worlds
Of its own within
Its summery, thin

Blue and felt petals
Brushed by our fluttering
Eyelashes, dust, centuries.
Flowers are mysteries

Good as any
Of the running strawberry
Galaxies, pin and pinwheeled lights
That clearer nights

Tend to smooth out over
Whatever is under their rumpled
Black cotton picnic blankets.
I'm here, but I thank it.