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