A Thought in the Dark

A Thought in the Dark

Except in idea, perfection is as wild

as light; there is no hand laid on it.

But the house is a shambles

unless the vision of its perfection

            upholds it like stone.

More probable: the ideal

            of its destruction:

cloud of fire prefiguring

            its disappearance.

What value there is

                           is assumed…

                                   

                                    Wendell Berry

                                    The Design of a House

Thought is a colony of alternative

lives pushing the dirt into and out of

where?

Where, with solid on all sides, does it go

when the ant pushes like the worm who goes

open-mouthed

into the grave weight and eat just enough

to squeeze through and leave what they’ve

eaten

transformed?  They should be knighted

just for their effort; it’s valiant yearning isn't it

that’s thrust

into the groping and blind fruitroot, to give it

the ride of its very life and heave it up into

the light?

All these colonies, in all these chambered

secrets and seeds we squirreled away

to save

or, more likely, regret, or more likely still 

erect a pedestal and plinth too to

ease the bust 

of cooling, shaped, soon gold gilded coal 

black thought down to the center of it

and from then on,

or from time to time, come to worship there

or dust it off just to recall its value on the name plate,

cover it in shame, 

maybe, with a wig if time’s made it

hairline thin and under- the- chin heavy.  There

are times

the worshiped thing seems fine as butterfly

dust, that stuff that rubs up when you touch it,

crumbles

                     

even though your breath’s held, under your nose,

close, slow.

And those times the old worshiped notion seems less

solid, as though not stone at all but temperate clay

animate,

on it’s own going where requirement takes it right

on the chin, the cleft then in the cheek, the socket,

all those orbs:

the nose, the open (though slow)mouth—

when it turns its face in just enough water

and mud.  See:

a whole new day at the wheel: when sitting down

in a well-lit room means tearing the shit out of it

and rolling

it all out flat again and starting fresh, starting

new.  The thought you've honored and idoled

for all

these years has come undone.  The trouble,

you see now,  isn’t in the clay.  It’s in the faith

of your own

two making hands.  It’s in the thin arteries come down

from the brain in the blood.  What gets through

these days

is hoary with age..  It takes its time.  Lost faith means

ignoring  time, believing you don’t have it. 

Ha!  Time!

It’s all you have really, or the labor

you do in it.  Too late to make new now?  

Listen: Ageless as

it is, God made shapes out of the tone

of time.   Whatever’s spoke to your own 

formless lump

it becomes.  Hold out your hand.  The small ball

of river-bottom becomes the throb your life is 

built on.  

See thought curled humble on your life-line, 

between the heart and the arc?  Shape it 

with your eyes 

closed, hear it, hug it, open your wordless 

mouth to it.  Smell it live?  Come, 

take it into you, 

your new, Phew! (after being

so, so old) wonderful thought!

Soup Kitchen

Soup Kitchen

Clumsy as a fat thumb rubbing

the crumb up from the ivory

linen, what once, when thumbs

weren’t dumb, spoke its own snow,

a pope-worthy glow only if only

the chasuble hem didn’t grope

among the mud and bums, our

priests of the brown paper

bags and street strobes, the only

altar light they know home by,

see, and the tree it illuminates

squeaks in small winds and a time

or two this guy’s got his back

up against her trunk like he’s biding

more than time, because he’s still

sharp enough knowing the wait’s in

the waiting, he’s going to scratch

a while under this dead tree 

and sleep through that yesterday

when hard-hat men came to

see and leave their pink come on down

tape to blow in that same whisper

like it’s got secrets it has to wait

in line to speak.  It’s this tree he sees

home by.  Home of his bread and cream

of chicken soup.  Tunes in the other

room.  Lemon cake…that crumb

he thumbs, one humble crumb in

a spot all its warm own, and the old linen

a hint in its crumple

of the before Good Will

used to be’s.  That brief sun’s not

down yet boys he winks, all swill and dregs

before he has to shuffle out the door

to step on that pink tape that,

when he lifts his foot, blows

up the street, past the tree, it’s pieces,

tipped over like the only thing ever

on the board were these abandoned kings.

Sisyfus Talking at His Stone

Sisyfus Talking at his Stone

What should I say on the shore of

a small dead sea

slowly the water fills

the shapes of feet which have vanished

                                                “Episode”                                               

                                                Zbigniew Herbert

Even here there’s routine

especially here I suppose

when a hole dug is a hole

you're hoping's undug but

since that’s not possible

the post hole tool, the one

leaning against the stone wall

that poet said would come

undone and it did and

shit if we weren’t sur-

prised even though

we’d been told even though

we’d been showed. 

Until the twin handle is

gripped and raised up

and all’s been plunged into

and spread, until the mouth

and jaw rise drip-dribbling

dirt some will ceremoniously

save in their own sacred pile

and some will throw aside

and scatter like winnowed

stones, until then you don’t

know you just don’t know

a hole a round perfect and

with each thrust deep (through

water sometimes, depending

on her season and how winter

kept her) the smooth handles

of the tool: post hole diggers

don’t grow, but you do, and o

how fluent.  Soon enough,
and in this place, listen, 

you’ll be in it: the tough

staccato of digger on stone.  

Saving a Life

Saving a Life

I am, I nearly believe,

the Samaritan who fell

into the ambush of his heart

on the way to another place.

                                    The Guest

                                    Wendell Berry

When stepping in isn’t even

enough not even nearly enough

because the water’s deep

and the ledge's high and choose:

toe or whole—wade in or throw

your skin and bones over (you just

don’t know) the low or high water mark.

It’s not sink or swim it’s how quick

you want to (or can) know to do both:

it's here you feel by instinct the ankle 

boneyou pivot on

is the skull bone you break open and at some

point, when you’re over your own

head, your hair’s a savior’s cape

and a noose too.  And when it all begins

to go gray, yes at first gray, you still

have time to choose.  But it’s when

those sprinkles of light, like open throat

kaleidoscopes that preen and get busy

before even your own mind’s made

up you think shitfuckgoddam what if

this guy’s got me by the throat?  Who’s

bloody coming in for me?

Lines

Lines

are not as easy a geometry

as they seem:

           

            kids rubber toe their own

            in the day old dry dirt, they draw

            face to face if they’re playing

            or if they mean it shoulder 
            to shoulder and deep

            with their heel, and it’s

            a gully and on each side

            they groan and spit

            they are fist and bone

            until they settle it

            and later their deep line’s

            a stream to pee in and laugh

            as it all goes down hill

            into the green that later

            the neighbor’s loose dog

            sniffs and covers

            with his own hot self

Lines

as drawn with surveyor’s

tape, a stream and a tree:

            and the story of a kid

            climbing this willow and the boundary

            stake's gone nearly clean

            into the trunk or enough

            not to be seen so how the Jesus

            falling did that blade run clean

            through his jaw and not

            a yell or a cough but his mother

            drawn to the spot by a prick

            on her skin, on her esophagus

            caught…pulling him off

            was the easy part.  she never

            unsees his bloody teeth

            and the clean white stream

            of sun coming (once just once, brief

            so years later she’d

            imagined it completely

            because her recovered son

                        three kids of his own now

            said Ma it was raining that day

            you said go out to play

            and I said in the rain

            and you said just stay on this side

                        of the gate

            but she swears one shaft—

            you know, what Saul went blind with

            shot down on his skull

            while she lifted him

            like meat off a hook

            and felt those teeth in his skull—

Lines,

like those I’m thinking about,

road paint lines

white and yellow lines

chopped double or solid lines

depending on the bending spine

of the highway, yes, those

solid lines that click their tongues or guide

or tease or float or blur

or hide or fade

and knowing is only years

coming down the road and I’m telling you

right now I had it I had it

the left yellow the whole time

I had it and boy if it didn’t have me

I wiped my eyes

if I didn’t I tell you I had it

on my shoulder the whole time

I didn’t slip it was left of me

even while my face flew

into the windshield the line

the center line

the property line

the I dare you line
the line the line right up up into me

like vomit

Looking at Life

Looking at Life

            There’s guys in here who

                        guys in here, listen, there's

                        guys in here

                        when you suck in

                        that mouth of shit

                        trash talk

                        and just in time

                        wipe your lips

                        you’ll hear

                        their stories.

                        I’ve been places you aint. or

                        She was a sweet piece.  or

                        It wasn’t me.  or

                        I don’t have

                        stories.  I’m like this one

                        guy they call him little

                        john cock being pretty

                        as a bantam rooster, copper

                        red and nickel small (I’ll give

                        him four cents.   I owe him

                        more) : listen

                        listen: first day I’m in

                        he sees I’m not Jesus on the water

                        but maybe I was in the boat once

                        and he circles and scratches

                        while I set bed clothes

                                    jumpers

                                    Velcro shoes

                        tips his jaw to hear

                                    the cat calls

                                    I see him spit

                                    and walk off

                                    for years

                        and watch from taller places

                        and we never once talked

                        but I never heard

                        that whistle again never once

                                    bent into the cliché

                                    ass, and I bet it’s him

                        I should tip my own jaw to.

                        No one ever tells me why

                        he’s in—just he got life

                        when his wife got killed 

                        on a snowy road

                                    and some kid got up

                                    and walked away, just

                                    fucking walked away.

                                    You believe that shit? 

All Rise

All Rise

The grief I’d know if I

lived into

your unthinkable death...

            During a Son’s Dangerous Illness

            Denise Levertov

I thought: the thing I"ll miss the most

            is sky because all around you

            will be brick and wire and blades

I thought: the thing I'll miss the least

            is dirt because all around me

            is rock and solid clay

I thought: if I have to if I have to

I thought: if I have to?  If I have to what?

            if I have to.

I thought: small spots I thought small

            breaths I thought blue I thought

            dirt

I thought my feet are numb I can't fee
            my feet even the mosquito 
            even my blood

I thought: when’s the jury coming back I need...

             

Gift

Gift

In a nest pleated from flesh

there lived a bird

its wings beat about the heart

we mostly called it: unrest

and sometimes: love

              “Maturity”

                Zibniew Herbert

I know I’ve scanned all this before—I know

her open grass and molasses hole where

when I was small and the worm bait knitted

in my fist I’d stepped up to my calf

and felt the suck of mud close cold against my knee—

And the way I’d had to bully and pull my foot

as if whatever jaw clamped it wanted it more,

and the red-wing blackbird swaying on a stick

of swamp grass or cat-tail I can’t now

remember which, was oblivious.  It’s here I crossed over:

pole and low boots—to the trout pond he’d told

me was on the other side—a secret well

of rainbows.  If I walked on my own he’d said,

he’d said again and again, I’d find my stride and if I walked bare-

foot I’d know the feel of where it all hid:

I’d feel the blood of the water twist under the grass
roots,  I’d feel the Jesus bugs skim and hover above it all

I’d feel that grass and bug breathing, not just

from wind but from some old age, under-the-mud

lung.  I tugged and tugged my boot—it sucked

and sucked and stuck until the sole of my skin lifted

from the rubber and there was air and there was sound

and there was the length of time it took to pull

and pull and it all let go.  And I walked, empty handed,

wormless poleless shoeless, barefoot as birth, the whole rest

of the way toward the gills siphoning silt, and fins
waving away the bottom of things, that, under such water,
always remain soft and somewhat solid.

spaces

spaces             between                                   quiet

So many feelings fit between two heartbeats…

                                                Zbigniew Herbert

Radio silence is sitting deep

in a hole and listening is not even

wanting or needing to

blink is open eyed is tongue-tied

is one lip above

the other lip is pressed to the teeth

like kissing

is groaning

hard

is all in the lung in one cough

is you, foe you, who grope

inside flies and holes and throw

the scream

back down my throat

Mates

Mates

You can give birth to an excuse so easily,
you will believe it's always been there.

                                      Saul Williams
                                      Slam

It’s in his hands first and specifically

in his fingers,

the way they twitch and snap

the way they’re forced

to pop because somehow

that’s the nerve he jumps

to charge.  His elbows

on his knees hands and hairy arms

straight out and palm on palm

it's his own way of praying.

But it’s not praying

I can tell you that, instead it’s his one

and only question, even if he knows

the answer, even if words get in,

they just need to feel it

coming out, or see it, if

there’s a mirror or a night

window between the teeth.

I get it.  It might be me,

in a few months, sitting on the bottom

bunk, tongue stuck in the rut

under my skull where a few days

before I came in the dentist pulled

the baddest tooth.   I clench but my mate,

he don't ask.

And later I won’t ask him either.  You just

know by the way the jaw goes

rigid to twitch, rigid to twitch…

it’s knowing to keep it shut

having the balls to swallow

the silence and move aside

while the top bunk sags

and that stiff whiff a wave

of piss drifts through the weave

of rusty springs 
and it’s the new perfume

of distraction in this cell of a room.

Not a Bird, No, Not Ever, Not Even Or Especially, A Dove

Not a Bird, No, Not Ever, Not Even Or Especially, A Dove

he has no wings

just a plumed

right hand

the hand beats the air

he flies up three feet

and falls back down

                        Zbigniew Herbert

                        “The Stars’ Chosen Ones”

Maybe it’s the climb I question

the most, is the foot up to the task,

the way places are pruned and tested

by our toes, jumped on maybe,  

to get sure.  Is the atmosphere

thinner up there on that particular

branch or beam and does the weight

of the rope or the clothes

tied into a rope chafe against

the hip, is it somehow removed to

a toy you as a boy swung up

into the dark canopy and swore

when it didn’t hook first, second,

third…but you threw and threw

and times it did and foot into the thick

bark, you scaled every tree

from then on like a pro.  At what point

did you stop climbing

into flimsy canopies and instead

cover your obscure sadness

with cactus thorn, with banyon arms,

Buddha’s bodhi gone to rot,

each branch straight down like cell bars?

When, sitting at the strongest

crotch, did you wrap your throat

with gold, gold what I don't know, 
and push yourself once

and for all, into the fall?

The Length of Winter

The Length of Winter

Up to the hips of

the grey stone Buddha the new

April snow has me

sweeping decks has me

anxious for the lone yellow

crocus who, like the

closed bill of a swan

rose into the surface then

weighted with its own

majesty, relies

on its slender neck to keep

her regal promise.

If it’s not fallen

            (those two brutal days of cold)

into last years lap

of cedar mulch, it

is stuck shut under all

this solid sinking

even as it lifts

itself to the one- then- the-

other- knee weight, out

of breath, or no, not,

but hunched like a small field mouse

teased out of cellar

holes and no way to

nose her way home.  Or, all

those years ago,  

our old golden

retriever who, near her end

that late-in-coming spring

took from my hand a

bit of food and laid it

tender, yes, tender

of the ground near my

boot and looked up at me, up,

waiting for my palm

on her head instead.