and lie down for the mower again.
(She is remembered
only in daydreams, never
in speech, never around the students,
never at the ballpark while the players
trot the bases before the game.)
These flat recollections of events
rarely feel like living.
And these children
bombing and standing beneath bombs.
This secretary,
these defenses
and this televised citizenry.
This oak and its technicolor translation.
Hayward Marshlands
Star was darting, prying specs of light along levees. Hear me here tomorrow and the next day, get the body in place. And everything that follows: calf, nape, and small. Let the bodies be assembled along levees, let them make salt.
Past the recycling plant, past the blasted shoreline. In the broken made world, words fall between us.
Airplanes on their southern approach to Oakland, concrete wind, a grey sheet. Shy and pneumatic, the distance between shore and shore. The glance can’t fix underwater, even in the shallows. When I knew you best, you were crying straight, but usually you were darting and masking. Hear me tomorrow in the red marsh grass. We will agree, and the water will be different, slightly on the surface and slightly underneath, driftwood.
Beginning with a Line by Rilke
Just once; no more
The ash
And its competent leaves
Just once
Above the wetland
Once the ridge
Laden, no more
Fog as flower
No more
The baying Holsteins
How the sun
Closes, happy
The ash, happy
The holsteins no more
Heron are you happy
Heron are you just
Ground Problem
The previous (planning as) (“natives”)
and deer-resistant (smile
violet) withering and drawn
losing investment
when mistakes are capital
one plant punishes (paper crèche)
birthday problem press, kiss
circles for trees, (trunks)
cross-hatches making
steps in space “you have to imagine three dimensions”
(before you go can I ask, fear of the unasked) “A bottle of”
(spring) plans
nervous laughter because mistakes
(tensiled and tearing) for fear
“growing” more and more
the way you want it if you know
in the side view looking down the drive
path of rock (fact: slant, drainage
issue: clay) beds of cedar
“may decay quicker but you don’t care”
spring greens (major growth spurt)
when the plan calls for messy she sounds
worried,
a drawing-in, (yardstick)
a tracing, a temporary version
the sun will tell us divorced light
a beige and then a bright (plant
palette)
we can’t tell here “what it will
look like in” what disasters (earthquake)
and what near-disasters between two people
stop talking in metaphors and choose a color
laughter is after and hers.
Sunset Beach
The ocean is not a dark mirror.
And the beach spreads its minutes largely: driftwood, folding chairs, apple grass, pelicans
tracing and breaking the breaking surface.
The sun hits the water directly and the world seems briefly measurable.
Not a dark mirror: a place for diving foundation for becoming.
Before, when the other was listening, speaking was easier.
Unnerving clarity with the sun directly overhead.
How to represent another thing or its feelings.
Or a certain dog or cat that must be named Alice or Scout, particulars that announce themselves and reach out, or don’t,
maddening to others, the way the path of the sanderling must overlap the path of the sandpiper, for some truly small amount of time, but historical
still. Not a dark mirror, knowledge full of seams and breaches: the sandpiper and the sanderling must be
invented again, sometimes together sometimes apart.
When did enormity give way to measurement?
