Imagine, just thinking the water was low, just wanting
to take a shower.
After that, when the water would act weird,
spurt, or gurgle, I’d imagine a body, a woman, a me
just years ago, freely single, happily unaccounted for,
at the lowest curve of the water tower.
Yes, and over and over,
I’d press her limbs down with a long pole
until she was still.
MOWING
The man across the street is mowing 40 acres on a small lawn mower. It’s so small, it must take him days, so I imagine that he likes it. He must. He goes around each tree carefully. He has 10,000 trees; it’s a tree farm, so there are so many trees. One circle here. One circle there. My dog and I’ve been watching. The light’s escaping the sky, and there’s this place I like to stand, it’s before the rise, so I’m invisible. I’m standing there, and I’ve got the dog, and the man is mowing in his circles. So many circles. There are no birds or anything, or none that I can see. I imagine what it must be like to stay hidden, disappear in the dusky nothing and stay still in the night. It’s not sadness, though it may sound like it. I’m thinking about people and trees and how I wish I could be silent more, be more tree than anything else, less clumsy and loud, less crow, more cool white pine, and how it’s hard not to always want something else, not just to let the savage grass grow.
THE REWILDING
What should we believe in next?
Daniel Boone’s brother’s grave says, Killed by Indians.
We point at it; poke at it like a wound—
history’s noose.
Below the grave, a cold spring runs.
Clear, like a conscience.
Now, I’m alone.
Only me and the white bones of an animal’s hand
revealed in the silt.
There remains the mystery of how the pupil devours
so much bastard beauty. Abandoned property.
This land and I are rewilding.
A bird I don’t know but follow with my still-living eye.
The day before me undresses in the wet southern heat—
flower mouth,
pollen burn,
wing sweat.
I don’t want to be only the landscape: the bone’s buried.
Let the subject be
the movement of the goldenrod, the mustard,
the cardinal, the jay, the generosity.
I don’t want anything,
not even to show it to you—
the beak grass, bottlebrush, dandelion seed head,
parachute and crown,
all the intention of wishes, forgiveness,
this day’s singular existence in time,
the native field flourishing selfishly, only for itself.
THE GOOD WAVE
A bat cracks in the flickering background
and we’re dead tired from the horse track,
all those losing bets stuck crumpled up
in our cheap fedoras, but no one, not even
the dog, is unhappy. Baseball announcers
are trying to be funny about nothing, crowds
cheer on the momentum of the home team
and it’s not too early for pj’s, or promises,
or some low-sung lullaby that salutes
the original songs on the inside. I decide,
someday, to name a kid Levon, and you
agree, and outside the dark traffic groans by
on our curving country road making a sound
like the slow roar of applause when
the home team’s tide unexpectedly turns.
DOWN HERE
The dog does this beautiful thing,
it waits. It stills itself and determines
that the waiting is essential.
I suppose this eternity
is the one inside the drawer,
inside the buttonhole.
All the shouting before
was done out loud, on the street,
and now it’s done so shushing-ly.
There is a saying down here,
I’d never heard before,
I hate it for you.
It means, if the dog pees
on the carpet, I hate it
for you, Too bad for you.
It means, if you’re alone,
when love is all around,
We all tip our lonely hats
in one un-lonely sound.
HOW FAR AWAY WE ARE
So we might understand each other better:
I’m leaning on the cracked white window ledge
in my nice pink slippers lined with fake pink fur.
The
