drive a truck through Kansas

why don’t you remember

isn’t dawn animal enough?

Casual, leaning on a maple tree

you watch the myriad

can’t it be me? 

                                   Am I

the only one to be only?

Kansas again, a cushion

below your heels, gradual

erosion of the peneplane

 

somebody’s birthday every day

give a kid a drone for Xmas

all a child ever wants to see

is whatever isn’t there,

it takes a lot of growing up

to take an interest in being here,

landscape of the moment,

 

or was it a birch tree  I meant,

the white one, you write on its bark,

childhood has its advantages

try to remember them

it’s only time gets in your way

the necrology of feelings

scribbled in a thousand sonnets

 

why did I get up so early

was I trying to catch the snow at work

before it sneaked away

or took the El back to 1950

girl on the platform bla bla bla

a poster to show how she should be,

a wall is to lean on like a tree

or was it a lamp post in London

an outcrop near Laramie?

 

You’ve got to lean on something

it’s like carrying your bed with you

snug under the covers as you go

dreaming on your feet

like a batter waiting for the pitch

flexing muscles you don’t have

dreaming images you can’t see

but still,

                         but still,

do it while you can, some

other lad will take up the thread

the tale, or lass, or let me

know how I can help

I used to know how.

 

2.

So that’s what the pre-dawn glisten

of streetlights said on the wet road

I think I was the only one awake

to hear it, but you never know—

the woods are full of listeners

what else is a tree for

they bear witness

 tell all that they have heard

since they planted us on earth

but we’re seldom smart enough to heed them

and for God’s sake how do you heed a tree?

that’s what they should teach in schools,

they teach us to listen

but to the wrong characters,

they should instruct us instead

on how to hear trees and listen to stones

then Bach would come back in all of us,

most of what I know

comes from hearing the church walls talk

after the hymns finally stop,

just sat in the light and listened.

 

 

3.

So why do I talk so much

my kind wife wonders

at breakfast especially

that long-awaited brunch

when the sun if any is high,

I talk and keep saying listen

Listen to the glisten I say

and she looks at me quietly

and wonders why I

of all people can’t hear what I’m saying.

But saying wants to be said,

o fearsome judge, saying

is what the stone does

and can’t I be shale a while

like the rock ledge in the back yard,

can’t I listen by speaking,

that’s what I’m trying to say

now go back to your lox and eggs

and I’ll try to be quiet

at least for a while.

April 25, 2020