Why is American money green,
what does it tell us
about our dreams?
Green is peaceful and
soft permission,
quiet Sundays after Pentecost,
moss on gravestones, merry eyes
of Scottish girls and tiger cubs.
Be green as you can
the dollar tells us,
I am the first President
and there is no other.
1 April 2023
Mel dat rosa apibus
All the vowels
and a star.
The give of things
made clear, all sweet and slow
in the loveliest places,
roses from the East,
beware the stings.
The rose gives honey to the bees
it said. It takes much longer
to say what it means.
The alchemical maxim woke me,
I tried to let the pillow stifle it
but words will have their way.
And which star? Did it mean
all the words breathed out
through its vowels, Ishtar,
Tara, a star?
I thought of Duncan
walking with Levi up 19th Street,
poet on the young poet’s arm,
the honey of his speech
never pausing long,
the sweetness is the accurate
is what he meant,
what it means,
I thought
of alchemy again, of all the meanings wrought
we still don’t fully understand,
yes, what this meant in the soul
and this in the love-life, yes,
and this in the test tube, yes,
and this in neurons, blood,
bone.
And the bees still feed on
what they feed us
and the rose still thorns,
hands and birds be careful,
the rose still sports its heraldry
in vases on lovers’ tables, yes,
and honey bears the secret
healing powers of the place
itself in which its flowers grew
the bees gathered, ripened,
the place we share,
we still
can bring it home in glass jars
and heal our subtler maladies
if we know how, hint, hint,
Hahnemann, hint, hint Dr. Jung.
So much of what we do
endangers bees,
O cure the bees of us,
this disease we sometimes are
even to the simplest flower,
we think they’re simple.
Winter now, and no bee flies.
And before the alchemists even
the poet said Quando
ver venit meum?
And when does my spring come?
1 December 2022
All I want to do
is what a mountain does,
connect earth with the sky
to let the living ones of both
rise up and come down to us.
Beloved readers,
we build with the same stone.
4 December 2022
Every staircase
leads into a museum.
Fact. Even the steps
up from the subway
lead into this diorama
called here and now,
the unseen curators
forever changing the display.
And in this old house
of yours or mine
we climb the stairs
to where dreams are stored.
7 December 2022
Walk with them,
the pilgrims,
let your feet imagine
their feet moving
mindfully along some
country road. Where?
Wherever pilgrims go–
the going is what matters,
not the goal.
When you get there
in mind or body
you will have been changed.
Subtly, deeply, no one
will notice for a while,
not even you. You still
will speak English or whatever,
still choose coffee over tea,
still swoon at Beethoven.
But something softly slyly
will be differing in you,
day by day. Something
like happiness. Something
a little closer to truth.
31 October 2022
T.E. in memoriam
Where the quetzal sings
a friend went to listen,
escaped from winter,
the shivering ivy,
snow deep on the roof.
And where the quetzal
sings he heard English spoken,
found friends with no shirts on,
sunshine, sea coast, intimate
knowledge of wave and surf.
When spring came he went home
when woolen neighbors asked
what he’d been up to he sang
O I have heard the quetzal sing.
31 October 2022
Earth sky be different
from all other skies
so it thought in me,
I dare not mute
a migrant meaning
happens to my head,
Thinking says
what it says, I listen.
I have always
been obedient
as loud as I can.
31 October 2022
I spot a map on the wall
a country I’ve walked in
but I can’t see the girls,
the cathedrals, the avenue
of walnut trees stretching north,
I can’t hear the market jabber
in that smart tongue, can’t feel
the wind rushing down old hills.
But there it all is two feet wide
and paper thin, a little faded
from the sun, held on earth
by four push-pins, my Germany.
30 October 2022
Lindens, maples,
tall tulip tree and river birch,
my countrymen, my guides.
2.
Travel by window alone.
Th journey is long,
comforting even,
endless like the sky.
3.
They are the given,
the green necessities,
light and shadow
turn their leaves we read.
4.
Pound’s birthday,
he knew a thing or two
about trees,
and Valéry’s
who fled with the birds,
this very roof that shields
the sky from our curiosity.
5.
Trees do that, exactly
define what wedge of sky
we see betwixt their branches
as last night one
sliver of the prospering moon.
6.
Linden loves us,
maple feeds.
Be simple as that
I tell the child
I can’t stop being.
7.
So it comes back to me,
the real one or disguised
as Chinese sage or stout Cortez,
the desperate hoper who
soars or stumbles out
of the gate of every poem.
8.
No, it must
be tree,
I insist,
not me—
I wouldn’t even be
if not for someone else.
Go find the else.
The tree must know the way.
30 October 2022
What would I need?
A cello a little forest
in Bavaria, a bassoon,
a baritone to murmur
some of the odd questions
that music love to propose,
why is the moon?
who is the mother of the rock?
do you love me whoever I am?
Then I’d set them all to work,
the trees too, their rustle
is my chorus, I just have to find
the notes for the instruments,
they like exact instructions,
nothing more severe than a flute
and I need one of those too.
Can you hear it now? I need you
to tell me what I’m saying.
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