Walk through the trees
to know
the burden of identity.
Blue to be a bird,
and then the yellow falls
from sun sky to be green
and you know all the rest.
But not my name.
The names are hard.

2.
Given the color and the shape
you reach for a book.
Given a book you reach for a word.
Given a word you give it to a friend
at least you think you’re giving
but who are you
and who is he, or she, to bear
what you have found?
We silence children
to keep them from telling the truth.

3.
Only late in the morning of life
have I come to understand
the peopleness of trees,
the talkative, the tender,
the fragile, sturdy, enduring.
Qualities we emulate without awareness,
we lean on them, we build
our houses from them,
we burn them to keep warm.
But maybe all this is
part of their plan too.

4.
Identity means plan.
Blueprint. Architect’s
rendering with no
architect in sight.
On site. Picture a tree
before a long flat house
lots of windows in a metal wall.
The tree is a blue spruce,
conical and tall. Now tell
from this information alone
who lives in the house, and who
their true love will be, and how
many children will they have.
Will it be real. Will the crow
deign to perch on so flat a roof.
If I were an artist I would
draw cookies on the lawn to tempt the birds.

5.
I look at all
that I have said
and wonder
where I got it.

For the moment
I don’t wonder
if I have a right
to speak—I’ll

go on till they
stop me, or they,
the others,
stop coming

close enough
to be said.
When I say Listen
to me I mean

Forgive me
for speaking
words from
elsewhere

hungering for you,
you right now,
to listen is the road,
to hear is to be free.

6.
OK, I can’t dance,
not worth a pebble
in your shoe to show me
how to do, no,
I am of the slipper folk,
the shufflers downtown,
the stand here until
that gorgeous Sun comes up.
I tell my beads a thing or two
and wait for that Lady—
does dance always have to be moving?
I remember Yvonne Rainer
leaning standing by a quiet wall
motionless except for all
the little ways a body moves
when it’s at rest. This
was the most dance I ever saw.

7.
So we should really need
a passport to be silent,
enter unspeaking into the
quivering dark from which
all language comes. Passport
to the other side. Signed
by your mother tongue
and witnessed by your true love.
Who knows what you’ll learn
in that country, and when
if ever you come back
what language you’ll be speaking.
You’ll stand in the market
and speak clearly
until someone comes along
who understands what you say,
just like any poet since the start of time.

17 October 2020