back surgery
the weight of wings upon my back
and yet it is they that let me fly
In warm rain
a blue jay on a blooming tree
a cardinal on the wire
This is the kind of contrast one can feel at the roots of back teeth.
Recollections reflect
Worn tales my mock self tells me -
Polish the mirror
Great gray-blue heron
With water up to thin shins
Glares through at his toes
Thunder and sunshine
It rained off and on all day -
Lazy wet Sunday
So huge and bloated, As a woman he induced Sexual despair
The Peace of Wild Things
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.— Wendell Berry
When sorrow lays us low
for a second we are saved
by humble windfalls
of the mindfulness or memory:
the taste of a fruit, the taste of water,
that face given back to us by a dream,
the first jasmine of November,
the endless yearning of the compass,
a book we thought was lost,
the throb of a hexameter,
the slight key that opens a house to us,
the smell of a library, or of sandalwood,
the former name of a street,
the colors of a map,
an unforeseen etymology,
the smoothness of a filed fingernail,
the date we were looking for,
the twelve dark bell-strokes, tolling as we count,
a sudden physical pain.Eight million Shinto deities
travel secretly throughout the earth.
Those modest gods touch us -
touch us and move on.[via postmarks]
Having hatched alive,
This flat snake froze a moment
When the wheel rolled down
Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.