that my touch won’t startle you,
won’t wake you from unquiet dreams,
I’ll hold my hand out to the night
and let it grow a little cold.
A Child Bird-Scarer
After an illustration in Life in Victorian England
I started at six with tin and a stick
scattering creatures from sharp seed sown
in Shalbourne furrows. Stones moved
what clamor couldn’t—starlings, crows,
a clattering of jackdaws rose
to perch on dormer sills and startle
their own glass-bent reflections, escape
a joke at which they alone cackled.
My boy, master chastened, mind
those beasts—see that seed takes.
So I lurked fencerows and puddles,
frightening what I knew would fly.
Sometimes a cruelty rose in me
I could not tell apart from all
I pitched at them. The stick I clutched
has doubled now in length, the tin
turned tines. Haymaking days, I wade
knee-deep in crop to stook, then bale.
I’ll steal away tonight and lie
atop the brittle piles, watch stars
as small as seeds I’d sown myself.
What I remember best is chasing
a field full of black wings knowing
they would only lift, loll, and drift
one hill over, far enough they might
forget whatever it is they feared.
Weep, You Prophets, in the Shadow of Heaven
Night. Prayer. The city is dangerous again.
Sounds rise skyward in countless concentricities.
Think them inverted bells yoked
To some geography of lines. Municipality.
Think them the sound of turning earth.
I unfold the map across the tabletop, take care
To feel the rise of crease beneath my palm.
First I touch those spots I’ve been,
Then touch the spots I’ll never be.
The largest bell ever made,
The Great Bell of Dhammazedi,
is lost at the bottom of a river.
History of the Inevitable
Fire wants to be ash, which wants
a bucket to hold it with unseeping certainty.
The bucket wants to look like the moon,
which it does some nights, while the moon
wants to be the storefront window, full
of something. But the window’s coats
are tired of town’s dull hooks and long
to be pitchforks, which long to be trees.
The trees envy the slow-moving cow
beneath their boughs, and the cow wants
an engine to propel it though the sharp
fence where the man rests, wondering
how he will ever go to his desire when
the universe so needs his tending hand.
Domestic Intelligence
Best trash this tulip spray
lest, come A.M., drooped
blossoms drop,
lest tabletop become
again some variegated
scattergram
impelling you to measure,
plot those points chance
and beauty intersect,
lest gorgeous red-gold
nonchalance grace
faience eggcups,
patinaed grapefruit spoons
you set while upstairs
wife and daughters slept,
lest over salmon crème fraîche
and warm pear tarte tatin,
your mind threads petals
back to florets, transfixed
all day by what remains
detached yet correlates.
Best nix this vase entirely.
Avert. Preclude. Forestall.
Best obviate astonishment
at each blossom’s way
of falling into just-the-place.
As if you’ll ever understand.
The Beautiful Things of the Earth Become More Dear as They Elude Pursuit
Another wave rolls over me before
I clear its crest. I haven’t surfed since June.
Foam
