Sowbug On A Bowl

Who's to know what I have said? This bit of clockwork in my head
Has no after, no before and knows no more than
Clockwork knows the world.
What I have said: thoughts are compounded ages,
Noises near a cluster of gauges where
Escapement ticks, flywheels whiz, where worry and a bit of business is.
We aren't only curled around a wheel. We are a bigger deal.

April, Point Reyes

Where sun draws all
But silver off it
And wind sends waves
Swimming marbled
Over themselves,
The sea seems an
Impossible idea.

I too am an unlikely thing,
Where a lone crow
Kites over dunes
Cawing our lone note
Into the pull of
Moon and stars.

In the roar, where
All their voices are,
I listen,
Where spray and
Turquoise coils glisten,
One impossible idea
Greets another.

Lens

Clouds over imagination
Open inward
Evolving voices, wings.
Each hour rises.
Flowers sing.

Planting In Hilbert Space

Something wakes as from a dream,
Shakes itself and begins.
It is you, me, everyone who
Has been and will be.
It can see
Time, swim gravity,
Stretch its electric body
Over rises, bends,
To wonders where
Galaxies spin and what
Is born where all
Of it ends.
Every spark contains our
Hopes, sorrows.
As from a dream, I ask:
Tomorrows, please, can
You promise tomorrows?

Enchanted Object

The genie
Who grants
Wishes gardens the future
On beds of things to be
Along paths
That aren't yet:
Selves self fails to see.

Garden isn't envisioned only:

One becomes a gardener,

Nor do wishes come simply true.
The silver and smoke
Is decision.
The genie ahead is you.

Submarine Forest

From Honor and
Glory over Time
To the cargo hold
At the end
Of the orlop deck
Are lives unstuck
From lesser current
And released
Into the sea.

She Asks Me Such

She asks me such
Odd questions,
Just to see if
I am listening.
To be sure, there
Are curious features
In all inquiry
Assembled and traded
Where wisdom begins --
Which do not include
Answers-- that cannot
Be dismissed.
She asks me such
Odd questions
That I married her.

Where Weeds Obtain

Even though copper
Sells everywhere--
Dubichev: Human
Consciousness tries
Not to focus on
These problems,
Never to encounter them.
Tveretinov: There is
No future here, no
Need for people anymore.--
Two hundred forty eight
Fetuses found in the
Forest outside
Lyovikha ought not to
Go unnoticed.

Expanding Herbaceous Borders

Around this moment,
An idea in a brain, container
Seeking a shape contained,
Have I been more,
More than petals, fur, clouds
In an inland herd?
Have I been a bird?
Or more, in this thing
Thinking things, have
I ever flown before, me?
Among hills, seas,
Voices yet to be,
Have I soared over night,
Unlit rocks, snow-caps --a
Thing flying deaf from
Time's collapse upon
A path of lightning?
Maybe periwinkle or
Something blue beside
The gate, will do.

Mind And Poem

In lives, all poems live
Twice, and upon this
Fellowship presume a course
In memory, even
To immobility.
Even still, stopped
Still under still
Lateen sail like a
Caravel locked in ice,
The poem lives twice;
May sink or ruin in
Mind but is never,
Never left behind.

In Norma's Garden

Mutual induction,
Recycler's lattice,
Leads to middles
And edges, things
And thought --a
Recombinant garden--
Mingled ends
And starts.
Magic is
A function of
Character and
Character,
Magical art.

Away Mission

[Norma photo]
Outside our garden,
Along a reservoir
And rail easment,
Toward thistles
And wattles, sights
Underwhelming
Win over
Wakefulness as
Our steps turn
Toward home.

In Praise Of Feral Women

[Norma photo]
To know you
Is under childhood,
Beyond caducity.
Old man, young man
I variously am,
And you, the
Excluded middle,
And timeless divide
Are a siren inferred--
A forming glow
At peace, wild--
Ahead of mere thought.
This I learn, an
Eternal child.
This, you taught:
Peace is wild
Dismissing only
What it is not.

Magician's Garden

You study
Spring gusts
Across a wand and
Hold it to the breeze.
I am pleased to
Wonder, am I old
And forgetting
Each sphere reflects
The greater sphere
Of the sky?
You are the
Magician,
Not I.

Why The Butte Crumbles

Earth rotates
Because, if you
Leave one end of
Anything up,
It wears out.
So does the
Other end.

42 Years

[Norma photo]
Here redbud blooms
Beside our door
And I, not only
Myself anymore,
Remember back
Into this thing
Of light, decision,
Life --it's all
One spring--
March twenty-first.
Its door gives onto
The universe.

Marzo

Era 1970.
Il mondo stava per
Inferno e
Ho detto a lei:
Won't you marry me
Just this once?
A volte si
Vincere, non importa
Quello che il mondo fa.
Si tratta di un giardino,
Solo un giardino.

Holy Land

[Norma photo]

When childish forces
Played with
Earth until it broke,
God spoke in
Aromas of dust and
Crumbled stone,
Left each alone to
Pick a way
Down rocky scrubble,
Down promontory or
Black cave--
Some immense trouble,
Some offense.
I forget what story
He gave, what
The problem was.
One is
A gardener and does
What a gardener does.

Where The Future Is

(Norma photos)
I will tell you
Where the future is.
I step beyond my
Shadow on the green
Back door to
Where she put a
Hat on him

And grandmothered dreams
Into memories.
The future roams our
Work in short steps
Under boughs and birds,
Seeing all, startled
At wind-eddies, awed
At assemblies of
Ants and daffodils.
I am paid in pebbles.

Children

[Norma photos]
Little people put
The planets up
On a line of wooden
Beads long ago along
The yard to arrive at
A shield of shells and
Shards --to face the sun,
Glow while time revolves
And solves itself
In long shadows.

Who knows what
Elementals leave
Their hollow hills to
Repaint routings done
So long ago?
Children-them,
Children-us belong
To the garden
And grow.

Sundial 2, Future Horology

[Astronauts service Hubble Space Telescope from shuttle Atlantis, May,2009. Credit: NASA]

An ant crawling up
An analemma gnomon
Knows what time it is.
It is his, his space.
A dial measures only
Its face and numbers
Trace astrometries.
Mean time encumbers
Bigger beings with
Trouble seeing what an
Ant already sees.
He sees what's there.
He watches --and
Watches need repair.

Penny Farthing

[Norma photo]

Light is energy.
It has no identity
Until it runs life.
After which it
Continues amid
Stars, defined
By its speed,

Pausing only in
Gardens --yours,
Ours or some
Planet-- where
There is need.

In this slow
Combustion of all
Life, light is
Everyone fueling
A single seed.