still leads in
by turn.
The torque
is all that matters
still.
And there we,
awkward and solemn
as somebody
else’s grandparents
in an old snapshot—
how have we come
to such a place
baffling as a dream?
Again, the word
brought us here,
the word unspoken
slept with the one we spoke.
No we. I mean me.
Don’t let me get
away with generalities
as if I spoke for all humans.
I speak for all beings.

2.
As I said or was saying
I got said. Miracles
still happen, the ship
did not sink, the ship we’re on
we think of as a chubby planet
actually is a slim
frigate sailing through space.
As I was saying, I was said.
I was sent to wander
through fancy very expensive
old department stores,
boutiques big as cathedrals,
my task in that grey-green
fin-de-siècle dingy light
was no more than to discover
an exit, a way out to the street.
But everything was indoors
in that dream. Bathrooms
hard to find, the elevator tiny
but the people smiled.
The last to get on was a small
Japanese—I liked his grey sweater.

3.
Sometimes it’s enough
to close a door to be there.
When you come into that room
the first thing you notice
is the flowers—
blue hydrangeas
in a clear glass bowl
so it must be summer
and the sea not far.
Those flowers make the room
a garden—sit down and be at peace
they seem to say. But then
you look around and see
the furniture of a demanding life,
desk, table, bookcase, TV.
What manner of creature
you wonder lives here,
plagued with images,
praying to the decent flowers?

4.
Do you remember
the first time
you lived on earth?
And what about
the time before?
So vague, so vague,
like the name
of someone you thought
or thought you loved
once and all
you can bring to mind
is a little ruby they wore.
Try harder, the past
is scarier than the present,
yes, I know, but still,
you are the shadow
you cast then, and I,
poor me, am just
the ground on which
your shadow falls.

5.
Words are folklore
nothing more
the scholars claim
but John said otherwise
and I want him to be right
but I want it to be
folklore too, the truth
we pass along unconsciously
while we talk about spinach
or taxes or the cool morning,
a word leads nowhere
and everywhere at once
and it is such a joy to follow,
trusting, trusting
the lore, the folk, the God
the word was that spoke us
and we spoke. All
of this is answering.

6.
Whorf was excited that
the Hopi had no special
verbal form to say past action.
O they could tell the present
from the past but their verbs
did not contain that information.
A verb is permanent
as an action is. It is true
whenever it was or will be.
Imagine Whorf in Connecticut
thinking about all that,
around the same time Wallace
Stevens was busy in Hartford too—

o time, time, you mean
so much to me
and I so little mean to you.

7.
Into the trees then,
the true,
the words they speak
that aren’t ours
but we can listen.
Not the lazy listen
we give to bird song
but eager, open-
hearted hearing
reverently available
to what we don’t understand
but does keep talking,
and will until we do,
the other word,
the word that is out.

5 September 2020