watching the curve of a particular road
as if something might happen.
It was looking at something farther off
than people could see, an important scene
acted in stone for little selves
at the flute end of consequences.
There was just a continent without much on it
under a sky that never cared less.
Ready for a change, the elbows waited.
The hands gripped hard on the desert.
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Day after day up there beating my wings
I feel them shrug whenever I pause:they class my voice among tentative things,And they credit fact, force, battering.I dance my way toward the family of knowing,embracing stray error as a long-lost boyand bringing him home with my fluttering.Every quick feather asserts a just claim;it bites like a saw into white pine.I communicate right; but explain…
You will never be alone, you hear so deep
pulls across the hills and thrums,or the silence after lightening before it saysits names- and then the clouds’ wide-mouthedapologies. You were aimed from birth:you will never be alone. Rainwill come, a gutter filled, an Amazon,long aisles- you never heard so deep a sound,moss on rock, and years. You turn your head-that’s what the silence meant:…
This is the field where the battle did not happen,
This is the field where grass joined hands,where no monument stands,and the only heroic thing is the sky.Birds fly here without any sound,unfolding their wings across the open.No people killed – or were killed – on this groundhallowed by neglect and an air so tamethat people celebrate it by forgetting its name.
When I face north a lost Cree
rock in the light and noon for seeing,he in a hurry and I beside himIt will be a long trip; he will be a new chief;we have drunk new water from an unnamed stream;under little dark trees he is to find a pathwe both must travel because we have met.Henceforth we gesture even by waiting;there…
Ours are the streets where Bess first met her
secure houses. At her job in the libraryshe arranged better and better flowers, and whenstudents asked for books her hand went outto help. In the last year of her lifeshe had to keep her friends from knowinghow happy they were. She listened while theycomplained about food or work or the weather.And the great national events…
I put my foot in cold water
they had to wade through broken iceto find the traps in the deep channelwith their hands, drag up the chains andthe drowned beaver. The slow currentof the life below tugs at me all day.When I dream at night, they save a place for me,no matter how small, somewhere by the fire.