| Contents Ridge Paths
Beach with Poll Jumpers
Dimintide
The Center of Your Continent
Reprise for Tuttlesville
Kansas
Clinton County
Burying Ground
Monday Morning
Arjuna 2000
Story Board
A Cool Breeze
Appearance
Pyrrho and the Green Man
Maybe Perversity
Like Soul Flight
Motion Study with Art Students
Mefus
Monitor
Mush and Milk
RIDGE PATHS
I don't know why there are two
silver flowers by the olive tree.
In all the centuries since I came,
no one has explained it or tried.
I am not about to start a new pattern.
I can't really. I am not equipped.
Once when I let the water trickle
like magnetic moonshine in my native mountains
I filed a thin passage between
my pointing finger and the artifacts
of corn farmers in the hollows.
Or at least I wanted to pluck the tunes
of large stones and hidden sassafras root
and copperheads and bean poles
and potato cellars, just for a thesis.
Now I think I will unwind the tense
coil and lay down on a warm stone
and let a mist of mountains
filter though my eyelids.
BEACH WITH POLL JUMPERS
There are very few reasons
to continue in this light.
He looked to the beach and beyond.
He ran past the ridge runners
and the farley pumps.
He looked at the steel groomers
and laughed for twenty years.
"Look," he said.
No one looked as far as we know.
DIMINTIDE
One time by the creek at night
I heard them jabbering
in the tree tops.
I had placed my palm on the water,
to greet the creek.
I smoothed back my hair with the water.
Then I heard them.
I looked up to the tree tops.
Clouds were passing in
front of a three quarter moon.
It seemed like the leaf
bottoms were winking.
I heard whispers.
The hair on the back of my neck bristled.
Then there was a fluttering
about my ears
and a buzzing sound.
"The delicate song will hold
you like a silicon web.
Sing it till dimintide."
Down the creek bank
a wind brushed its fingers.
I dreamed of boats on a silver lake.
THE CENTER OF YOUR CONTINENT
Strike up the warm waters,
little tom boy.
Circle the wagons and
dig in the prairie with a stick.
One whole day on the road
and there you are
pretending to be a farmer.
The sky lowered and turned purple
and fingers of red reached down
to touch your hair.
I shouted them back,
but they ignored me.
Small professor,
in the center of your continent.
REPRISE FOR TUTTLESVILLE
Time within the similar vein
has repeated a tone and a song.
I really love it!
No, I said time is a swizzle of
motion and the desire for motion.
Sell the toys!
OK, let's see, time is half over
in this life world if we are lucky.
Oh!
When the rising rivers in Ohio
failed to make off with the toads,
the frogs danced and danced
until my dear sainted best friend
forgot who I was and poked me in the eye.
I can tell you,
I stayed home from school that day.
KANSAS
"Lay the bricks softly," she said.
"Lay the bricks straight."
Ten years ago I would have listened,
but now I would like the houses
to build themselves.
Can a random pile of bricks ...
silly speculations!
Once I was hitchhiking to Colorado.
The cars on the Interstate became silent
as they streamed past
faster than winter.
A confusion of forms danced up ahead.
I drank some water, and dust and flowers
circled around me
like crystal or amber.
Now I only write about such things.
CLINTON COUNTY
Ridge runner clouds the spear.
"Look, man, no realize. Put!"
The stones and alpine tires
are not the ridge runner.
When the water runs sweet,
oh sweet, sweet, tender mercy.
The hollow is filled now.
My grandmother with a walking stick.
Copperheads danced when I was born.
No, really, springs bubbled.
When the rains fall bitter,
oh bitter, bitter, tender mercy.
A jar in Kentucky or across the border.
She teared in the corn patch, trembled.
BURYING GROUND
The old stones are the best,
they are more like corn fields.
The moss is thicker with dates
and epitaphs and pocked stone.
Let us set up the fallen stones
to remember the old farmers.
The children still cut through
the graveyard to school,
still red-winged blackbirds,
still bees and violets.
Old ghosts, I don't know,
rough hands, cider, raccoons.
MONDAY MORNING
The grim looking glass spins
and she sees herself only in flashes.
She drums the tune among the wild flowers.
We will be home soon she tells the seed pods.
Never will she give up the ripe still
morning, smelling like leaf mold and oranges.
Her day rings the timely tipler.
It may be a waste, but she likes it.
One year ago the demands were less intense.
Now the cars are like tornadoes in dim light.
When the river asked her the reason,
she just splashed, her first swim in twenty years.
The quiet pastels, especially peach and light
orange, and a washed out green like olive trees.
ARJUNA 2000
A smooth motion on the slippery palm
and a run through the pillows where calm
soldiers focus on their inner center
and rise like leafs in the brown of winter.
The calm soldiers flash their eyes swift
glint to the falling snow, falling gift,
through the runners sliced soft bread,
their calm, swift prayer to the dead.
Can they be these inner warriors when
their tools are just machines, not men
but operators, no blood on hands but
scattered by metal to metal hand gut?
By the streams of Babylon can they weep?
They are exiles and in a sort of sleep
hang their battle terminals on the trees,
let their calm breathing rise and release.
STORY BOARD
He ran through tangled trees and vines
wiping garden spiders from his face,
busting into a clearing to suddenly
freeze, the blue land crab timed out.
Philo asked like a professor,
"This is a narrative, isn't it? There is
nothing political here."
Thirty years later, he met Philo
at a falafel stand on Mount Carmel.
The professor of course was older.
He asked, "Why do you think that
poetry can affect politics unless
it motivates?"
The platform on the banyan tree.
Thick leaves, succulent leaves.
Questions, questions, questions.
The air is still, thick and warm.
Thirty years later, on the stairs
from Hillel, two kittens tumbled.
Up the hill, two old toms yowled.
They seemed to be saying,
"This is my answer, back off."
A COOL BREEZE
A cool breeze in the desert,
other widely used figures,
crowd up against it and run
fickle through the thorn bushes.
Let's deflect it, a plodding
amulet, wallet card, hopeful
cluching time tune roamer,
no, no, don't be that way.
A cool breeze through trees
never fails to please, ah
let's all sing the day, quiet
over by the blue bay, cliche.
But to play, to let the thread
spool spin out scarlet and green,
there is no shame in it, really.
APPEARANCE
Philo says the rain will fall
like red birds on a golden floor.
He knows it will happen.
They parted the trees, looking
through into a false reading of
summer and other dialectics.
You may be thinking that I really
have nothing to say, but aren't
there silver petals of noon?
Philo is a rogue of sorts.
He leans against a beech tree,
not wanting his initials to show.
Long ago he was a dancer.
He would brutalize his audience
with devilish toes of print.
He worked in a warehouse once
and would sing of full fathoms five
and pearls and eyes and flies.
So his appearance here is not
for nothing. He is a central
figure is some drama, whichever.
PYRRHO AND THE GREEN MAN
He poked his head in.
"Now! Leave now!"
He was very sure of this.
I could tell by his
incisive idiom and
green tie and suspenders.
I didn't leave though.
I would just hang out
on the liberal fringes
quietly stirring heresy
into a cauldron of blue
book covers and web pages.
But later he seemed to
gain some kind of hold.
He was poking around here
and there, spy stuff really.
He wanted to turn me in.
But he was a good man.
Many years later we sat
together by the ocean
close to Table Top Mountain.
He still was a green man,
but he could see blue
and he had a kind heart.
MAYBE PERVERSITY
Where there is a ride to ride
I will ride it and look, hide,
and perhaps dance, prance, but
this is not much, just a door shut,
just another random line of
data lost in the knot, love
is all that it can be, or wizened,
or my fair night of joy likened
to a tapestry of rivers and trees
or a man simply asking, please.
Where there is a story to tell
I will listen, not tell, well
below the horizon of assertion
silent waters of sweet perversion,
or maybe perversity, are the way
I would have them, if they stay
and provide, hide, in the web
of a day just tumbled, just dead,
a story that tells itself, nature as
the book we read reading us.
LIKE SOUL FLIGHT
The size of the giants, well it
was the size of the giants,
and clouds for blankets.
The obligation of self definition
is said to be a freedom and to
be free from it a self made freedom.
The struggle for a calm belief,
a belief in which to rest, can only
be found in suspension in dim morning.
Another one, being unto death,
true, but not worth dwelling on
except for planning purposes.
If you do no harm, do as you will.
This is a sort of freedom, at least
a freedom to dance on a wild hill.
But I would do no harm. I don't
want to do any harm or to be harmed.
A crystal bowl in clear water.
When the river bank fell away
I saw the gopher's hole and the
little ones in brown baskets.
When the basic functions start to
shut down, where then is freedom?
In a flight like oranges?
No, let's build a solid house.
It may be a shack but it's paid for.
The chimney sprouts silver feathers.
Back to the topic. We can see that
twenty years is a long time. But
forty could be so much better.
I demand, I demand, I demand.
The soft bed feathers prickle at
least a little in the cool noon.
OK, freedom is just another word.
I know. I am just quoting.
Freedom, ah, freedom, gentle freedom.
Now we can feel it like an old
insight, like breath and spirit,
like soul flight and winter chimes.
MOTION STUDY WITH ART STUDENTS
Now there was down there in
the Dimmis Don Divine
a middle-aged girl,
a middle-aged girl with
frightful curls like vines
and eyes a little bright.
You might object that she
was a woman, not a girl,
but she would not agree.
She had eyes a little bright
and she could dance free
like a nude in blue light,
but to her it was not a painting,
it was her body and the movement
of color patches and sources.
MEFUS
Mefus was an ogre boy,
a lad of the low lands.
He built his house with oranges
in a city of apple trees.
Mefus was a man of means,
a king of the high stones.
He had his nursery among pines cones
in a country of beechnut trees.
Mefus was an old sage hermit,
a scholar of the hidden ways.
He pitched his tent in sand dunes
in a county known for tulip trees.
Mefus was an uptime spirit,
a ghost of broad textual tracks.
He wrote his poems in ether air
in an otherworld of puzzle makers.
MONITOR
He finally got out of himself.
Sitting at a console he monitored
the flow of virtual and real worlds.
Configurations of language, experience,
and desire like exotic ecosystems
spread, then died off, then suddenly
expanded again and then were gone.
"It's just history," he said to
his inner friend and he smiled
and leaned back and his own
configuration quietly glowed on
the screen like light through trees.
MUSH AND MILK
Does a fiction need a purpose?
Is it really a fiction?
It is a text or an image that
is used as if a truth, a fiction.
How do we use these odd texts?
To pass time? To think about things?
When we have items pegged, we feel
like we can rest for a few minutes.
The need to have a working map,
it is a survival instinct.
But more, to have a song, a story,
we feel at ease if we know they are there.
So one more spin on experience
needs to be sorted and listed.
One more evening in the flat,
at least one funny story or jingle.
The old fallen fictions didn't really
make more sense, they were just familiar.
So do the books on my orienting shelf
define a project like fire songs.
But withdraw them all, just sparks and
shadows and hollow breathing and pains.
He baked me my bread and brought me my ale.
He sat by the fire and told me many a fine tale.
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