Paradise Lost, or The Inevitability of a Fall
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Monthly Archives: April 2015
as a kid i always knew the wind was up to no good
as a kid i always knew
the wind was up to no good
for all it never did me any harm
in the stories it was always
driving the hapless schooner on the shoals
then becalming the shipwrecked sailor
who clung to a spar a ragged shirt for a sail
or it was sidling down back alleys
and through the branches of landlocked trees
under moonpale clouds in the dead of night
squirreling away skeleton leaves
ghosts of plastic bags
and stale shreds of news
to deliver them unlooked for
months and county lines away
or it was whipping up prairie dissent
sometimes slamming a straw straight
into a phone pole
like a hammer drives a nail
or it was snooping up water for later
then freezing it to hail
the size of golfballs
pelting houses and cows
and fleeing into the stratosphere
so i knew not to trust the wind
even though it might never get around to
marooning you or
slamming a soda straw into you
ponder the still eye of the storm
you ll see what i mean
Under the hood:
Supposing Wishes Fishes, Night a Well
I spoke a wish into the dark,
as if I dropped a fish into a well,
then paused for a returning sound to tell
if water caught it, not dry stone,
not dead coins only. Not a sound came back:
That wish went its own way, and left no track.
The night is long. Where may a wish not go,
when every word’s alive, and each is true?
In such a span of time, what can’t it do?
Under the hood:
Visiting the Taoist Priest Dai Tianshan, but Not Finding Him
(after Li Po)
I heard his dog barking down by the creek, but when I tried to follow
A hard rain fell, scattering the peach blossoms, hiding the path.
I’ve long since lost the dog, the creek, the path; I can’t hear the temple bell,
And one stand of bamboo is like any other.
I think it’s spring now, or will be soon: it’s greener, anyhow,
And sometimes I see deer, off in the woods.
No one else can tell you the right way to go, that’s what he always said;
Meaning, I thought: Trust yourself. See where that’s got me?
No rain that summer, my father said
No rain that summer, my father said, the grasshoppers’ song bringing
No relief among the dry weeds. Then the buffalo came like thunder,
My father said, they came like the flood
That follows rain. The hunters went out singing
In the cool before dawn, dark shapes going along under
A dark sky. My father said by the time they came back again,
The whites were heaps of bones beside their heaped goods,
And the grasshoppers were singing up the rain.
I learned it from watching you
I learned it from watching you: everything starts with oneself.
There’s nothing but tomorrow: a single shot, a single
Life, narrow as a line that runs through me. I fell in love
With the child of Dawn and Night: the sturdy one who set out
Knowing only one language; drank from the well of sorrows
Between the worlds; Spring-trap; Storm-starter, who set the earth to
Quivering. The stars wheel about us, and all that matters
Happens between us. The young leaves are coiled. Their uncoiling
Tells the story: nothing will ever be as we had feared.
Just think of it: one day there will be none to remember
When things were not this way: the sky grey, like no tomorrow
Will ever be enough to save us. And then the rainbow.
Under the hood: Continue reading
Drinking the driven storm, the sturdy apple
Drinking the driven storm, the sturdy apple
Dances, between sky and earth, her spring-young leaves.
Knowing no purpose, knowing only season,
Her spring-young leaves, storm-driven, dapple
Earth and sky; all that my eye perceives
Dances. My eye drinks in the apple’s spring-
Young leaves, her dance that has no reason:
Only the storm, driving each dappled thing.
This poetic form is called san san, which means “three three” in Chinese (and is a term of art in the game Go). It rhymes as you see (a-b-c-a-b-d-c-d), and also repeats, three times, each of three terms or images; here, the driven storm; the spring-young leaves; the dance.
o no na po wri mo
the month of april
which is poetry month
is insupportable and ill timed
it’s still nearly winter when
words didn’t help us get by
it’s still nearly winter now
there was a season that made sense
that stoppered life that held us to
one single obligation just to last
to ride it out and not to
burrow so deep that there was
no coming back
to the surface again
that was wisdom that was
really a better idea than this
I never trusted spring
this coinflip season
spring with its rotten
ice and its seepage
spring with its alarming growths
winter was better better
to hide out better to live small
to listen to the wind
and the rain passing better
to be a clever animal
better to wait out the cold
better to forgo what sunlight was given
easier to survive then
than to live
now:
Bag of Anything 