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                                               there is a                                                 welcome                                                     posture                                             the sun does                                                 I wait for it                                                  hold myself                                             against it all day                                              hang a string on                                                                 my ear                                                                     with a                                                               note saying                                      let’s get this place cracking                                                 your encouragement                                                         was everything                                                     at first I thought                                                  your tiny sponge                                           was no match for                                        my muddy                                    window                                     I want to be                                       the friend                                         who accepts                                            your gifts                                              sing with                                               wind as                                                though                                              it is a                                           duet                                          then                                        suddenly it is                                   none of them                                    write poems                                          any more                                            the spirit                                          said don’t                                     speak to me                                    you have lost                                    your position                                       in my heart                                             make                                              a noise                                              to get the mouse                                              looking over here                                            all gravity ever did                                          was hold us down                                        whether or not                                       falling gets up                                     in the middle                                      of the night for                                       a little falling                                        in love or                                         falling off                                           a cliff                                            I’m fine to never                                            see them again                                            but I do miss                                            their poems                                          he threw                                      away the only                                        recording of the                                                poet                                             moths circle the                                        brightly lit head of                                      the reporter telling                                        us the body count                                          of the latest war                                                    in the rot                                            and filth of a                                         landfill is the                                         poet’s voice                                         I cannot                                         stand it                                         my god                                         picking                                        through                                      garbage                                   I hear you                                  poet-antidote                                      keep singing                                   I will find you                                      please don’t                                       stop singing                                                           for ten years                                                 I lived in my car                                                  people asked                                  where are you going              I always said I’m traveling away                the wanderer the road knows                  the intestinal trans expatriate                               I met a man who feared                               termites though his house                                                was made of stone                                                      I wrote on truck                                                                     stop walls                                            DEAR SLEEPWALKERS                                             EVERY US TAXPAYER                                        IS A WEAPONS DEALER                                         in Mississippi I touched                                            the pig’s heart in a jar                                          for weeks I saw other                                               worlds of clover                                                 could sense the                                                   romantic fusion                                                    of living and                                                     dying in a                                                     frying pan                                                   left with a                                                divulgence                                             what else is                                           paradise losing                                       if not our trust

I want to thank you dear sister, dear clouder and mister,for your rain and your dew, your dew and your rainthat make so much flourish on my arid terrain, my robe of all flowers, my wells and my cisterns. Dear Body of Water, dear evaporation systems,I want to thank you for your fogs and your drizzles,your…

Maybe I was asleep in dawn, the grandestdame that ever unbent me like a willow. Isn’t nature my ma, my salve and solving?Soon the sun had arisen, leaving velvet marks on foxes secure in ferny hideouts,squirrels thronging for fallen acorns, branches torn from oaks in tornado watches, cloudycovers on me. And all my secrets scattered….

follow the back road’s          twist & turn, try to lose                    the red-winged blackbird’s scolding          lyrics—hurry on past—                    hum with summer insects’                              soundscape that doesn’t bitelike the mosquito woods          that root dark & twisted                    their shadow & light          move like the East Twin River                    that offers water                              for the Thompson Familyold growth maple that transforms          sunlight into oxygen                    inhale & you becomepart of this place

It was the summer, almost dawn,the windows open, curtains drawn.It was the kind of light that brushes pink bands along the dunesand opens its fingers through privetrubbing salt mist against the screen and bleaching the fox who dragsa bluefish tail and spine from hisjaws before he enters spirals of brambles and disappears.Sometimes, when the dark…

Today, without authority, I woke to morning birds.Without authority, today recalled the feral night that fled.Without authority, I listened to today’s trucks passing—       their diesel hauling diesel, hauling batteries, sent-back clothes.Without, today, authority, I pondered their drivers’ lives, their drivers’ children.Without authority, I stood above—too quiet to hear, today or any day—        root-mats of fungi.Without authority, I…

“Listen close,” she says in my ear, “I’m someonetoo, I’m someone telling you secrets, systems.”Dusk, my body, opens for tender breezes,broken but breathing. “Call your question, wait for the answer stormymornings, in the thunder,” she tells me. Forecastdry to drought to making my hurt eyes water,mountain to valley. “Talk to sky,” she tells me. I…

1 In 1953, what sprang up all over, took charge:new housing tracts, supermarkets, gas station grand openings,great smoggy pyres of bulldozed orange groves. I kept track from our creaky, high-water, clapboard bungalowat 402 West Elm. Pedaled my bike to all those great giveaways,all that free candy, all that gaga grand opening grandeur. On July 17,…