ROBERT
KELLY

of a tree
they used to say
who now say trunk,
every word
says more than itself,
every stick points two ways.
Come with me
and say this mass of clay.

2.
Rivers are silver, some,
rivers are blue,
there was an arm of the sea
wrapped round where I lived
color of dark jade.
Oil they said
made it so
and things unclean
but I believed the color
so I grew.

3.
But that’s just personal,
and words somehow
live somewhere else,
in me and not me,
and they all come from
the ocean we call you.

4.
Suppose a Chinese bowl
celadon green
we watch in a museum
making the light quiver
inside the glass showcase.
Have you come
to fill that bowl with longing
the guard asks.
And then we wake.
Everything is still there.
Here.

5.
Look it up in a book,
a book is full of them,
maybe not the one you want
but maybe something
twice as far or even true
or even looking straight at you.

6.
And we think birds are simple!
See them in the tree or in the sky
and don’t even bother to specify,
just birds, daytime things with wings.
And dare to call it poetry.

7.
Do you smell something like complaint,
snuffy, like a bit of wrapper
caught in the burner
or something stuck
to the bottom of the pan?
It disperses slowly
but is still there minutes after
the gas is turned off.
Leave the range. Open a window.
Think of all the states you visited
and why you left some out.
Forgive me, Montana, I was so close,
oro y plata you said
and I still believe.
No more complaints.
Climb the bowl. Unpack the tree.
I am, I am everybody else.

8.
Abide a bad abode?
Ad for adobe, go,
do like Egypt,
do like Arizona.
A mass of clay
shaped to shelter
in its manyness
a single house.
You get the picture—
start now.
You’ll never know
where this word goes
until you get there.
Even then a tree tends
to have a mind of its own.

9.
We and words
have different meanings,
crystal on our watch,
pool of eager applicants
no fish in sight.
Help me through this busy night,
the mass is ending
but the prayer sneaks on.
So I leave you with all
I cannot say, all that you
eternally know full well.

20/21 March 2021

Sometimes strangers come,
hoot like an owl but you
let them in anyway, why not,
you’re not a mouse or a vole
to be scared of an owl, you
are the whole parliament
and sanhedrin together,
you are a human brain as usual
hungry for the next thing
to happen around you. To you.

2.
If birds left tracks in the sky
not just the snow, this would all
be clearer. But it’s left to me
to explain. Who said so?
And to whom? I hope to you
so you will be patient
with my explanations.

3.
Plural because there are so many.
History, Chemistry, Religion,
the whole junior-college curriculum
waiting for your fastidious appetite
so characteristic of the laity.

4.
Don’t be insulted by my song,
it’s the best we flightless fauna
can achieve, breastless mammals, men.
Language means to simplify the sky,
complicate the tangled forest,
bring peace to the writhing candle flame
and still keep its light.
Language is wind.
Maybe that’s who makes
that whooing sound at the door—
I am the next word that comes along—
come, follow me.

5.
But it’s you of course
to whom the language
tries to reach, touch,
bring together with
all your secret kinfolk
in this jigsaw puzzle
we call the world.
To bring you all your husbands
and a thousand wives,
tower in the desert, cave in the hill,
all your wishes flourishing
lush lavender fields by Cavaillon.

16 March 2021

Staggered terraces
behind us now,
crossing the sand
in almost no moonlight,
stepping word by word
strong as we can.
And you are the river
I’ll have to swim
to get to the other side.

2.
That’s my true home,
I belong wherever I’m not.
Hence journey, quest,
and all that secret pilgrimage
that keeps me where I am.

3.
One of the princely Livingstons
built his house on the west
bank of the Hudson, so far away
it took him so long to come
back across that he missed
the big gathering for Lafayette.
So they called his house Wrongside,
the name stuck, the house stands,
they brought me to it
the first day I came to this place
sixty years ago and made me come back.

4.
Carl Sauer insists that humans
are littoral creatures,
live on seacoasts and riverbanks.
And we know that for people
who live on any shore
the other side is the one that counts,
comes in their dreams,
summons their feeble ships to cross.
The other side is real
and where we are is just an accident,
oasis at best, be careful
of the water, only the trees
really know how to stay.

15-16 March 2021