HEART THREAD 265 & 266

265.
Till we have said everything using
the same words
music won’t leave us alone
children blur the colors in their
books
they know that nothing has a line
around it
careful signals of a girl at peace
let me read my book to the center of
the earth
plum trees of Afalon truth of the
dragon
a castle in the cool core of the sun
a place previous to transformation
before the legal chemistry begins
a joyous anarch in skimpy clothes
as if it all could finally begin
again.
                                                              
266.
At a certain point stop looking
at the trees start to read them
the self-planted and the other kind
human implants immigrants our fancies
jade exotics in exurban gardens
three hundred years and still speak
foreign
rose of Sharon smokebush lilac
self-taught espontaneos who choose to
land
and choose to stay tall and shady and
teaching
hue saturation and chroma in their
differences
distances between nature and the
actual
my father’s pine trees on the road to
Callicoon.  

HEART THREAD 264

264.
Eloquent darkness of what I didn’t
bother to think
the things we make up were there
already
stories waiting to be believed
amber and lightning waiting to be
analyzed
they were all waiting and here we are
the next thing you think will be the
truth
the next person you meet will tell it
how easy things are when you say them
a woman in a white robe walking on
the sea
believe nothing trust no one revere
everyone
that way you fall in love without the
fall
that way the apple leaps back to the
tree.  

HEART THREAD 262 & 263

262.
                                                                    (comment
lire ce livre)
Each line wants to go off somewhere
far away
sit there thinking about itself
but we all have noisy neighbors
we lean on one another for the touch
take strength take weakness from each
other
even feebleness is reassurance
touch is contagion
but we are here together
tangency is defilement
one line bleeds onto another
you belong to the next thing you say
and to the thing that came before you
then you’ll belong to what they
finally hear. 

263.
Wait for the sun to pry the rose open
then petal by petal take it in the
mouth
so delicate it is you have to chew a
while
chew to let the taste come in
for these are dark times in
personland
animals cull the flowers in the night
animals leave us only the names of
things
only things like color shape texture
size
things like reason things like belief
that are not things at all only you
are
and I am we are the last of the
flowers
we grew up before the end of things.

HEART THREAD 258 & 259

258.
The other place than where it is
a gleeful mistake like a dog running
away
penny in a pocket sun behind cloud
everything is allowed
when you were a tree I held your
leaves for you
when you were ocean I was your waves
the flight attendant listens to the
sky
the word is out there just below the
plane
when you were a city I did not know how
to earn
glamorous ignorance of well-fed
tourists
animals are different inside rocks
are the same
their brown eyes open in amazement at
the snow.
259.
So much to remember and no need to
quiet wise men correct the weather
witchcraft is too natural she said
too much about fertility                                   
being fertile is not the point being
now is
no one ever did that in my dream
before
cloud lift sun back mad at me up
there
for I have sought the gods beneath
the hill
the little gods who promised nothing
but to be
nature is the part of me that’s
someone else
birdsongs inking lines through trees
always coming back as usual to some
flower
I climbed the stairs to where you
almost were. 

IN LENT

A
sad people
who
never will know
what
this world is —
taught
by religion
to
look away. 
To
be joyous
we
must look through.
Put
that in your ragged gospel
music,
reverend,
rush
out of the church, rush
through
the trees. 
Through
the tree.