Rubens wonders
how to put that ripple of unrest
in Paradise where it doesn’t belong.
It can’t be there — or how then,
for won’t then
Heaven, too, be spoiled?
He sleeps and dreams Eve,
who comes wanting not knowing —
and in an arc the dream falls
from the snake to the woman to the man.
For Jim and Nancy Forest
When my grandma put up her fence
it wasn’t because of the neighbors.
It was because of the junk.
They’d never done anything and
she’d never done anything.
But she didn’t have to look at it.
They’d all have to look at the fence, though.
And at, behind it, the open heart of man —
at Adam atop his heart cleaving.
Flash
needle-like
so thin the heart
knows without feeling
(flood)
the changes that it brings
And I too if you gut me will give
You’ll be delighted to know that you
register anywhere in anyone’s mind,
a flicker, the wavering line.
Hardly alive in yourself, there’s a
little of you there.
Would that women were so
open with their readiness, crying
“Come get me” in the night —
“Come get me” — while the
neighbors grumble, “What
is that?” and shut their windows
against the excess of need.
Life dishes out its unbelievable burdens
except it’s totally believable
because it happens every day
From a drug or perhaps
lack of the same or,
I think now, your alarm
at our knock and all that that
might mean
We pitched our tents at Rialto,
then hiked north past Hole-in-the-Wall,
past the Chilean Memorial,
looped around Cape Johnson
and moved inward to Lake Ozette,
where we rested.
On the way back we clambered over
rocks in the dark, got trapped
by the tide, and had to spend the night
in shorts by a fire.
But back, finally, at our tents,
cooking pancakes, what I remembered –
and remember now most –
is my reading a poem, not my own,
at the lake, and faltering,
embarrassed:
who was I to read such a thing?
And your gently urging me on,
as though you could know and love in me
what I couldn’t yet love
in myself.
For John Daniels
And for Shelley and Darryl
So God has turned you loose.
Welcome, welcome!
Utrecht Journal 