All manner of tears
sparkle on my table

            each day  

of my life has been
            a dreadful awakening

beneath the centrifuge

            in my backyard

there's a tree
 
            that refuses to give up
the least of its terrible

fall
luminosity

and

clings
           
            in wrinkled
leaves all winter
           

even the acid rain
can't profane it.

Thirty years ago
            I asked

where, what sad cup of

            the body
            keeps the soul.

Today, they are dragging
           
            my neighbor's immigrant

daughter

away in a Wal Mart uniform
           
            to work at Wal Mart

the gigantic bees

            of headlights corral

in my suburb

            nightly

I am alone at
maximum sheep
density

            dear Sasha, everything

is wrong; everything
caves in my face and
            pockets

the moon

                        creaks

            ungainly on the highway

we have forced it on

Emma

            couldn't answer me

I was hugging that tree

in my backyard 

            again

the light, oh the light
 
through the trees

            is so beautiful

it burns my throat
like helium; it wants to
lift me

            even now

I do not wish for
children to take 
trombone practice

the tree

sways
            its leaves swim

in place, green stars

I stretch

            my body thin, lullaby thin

brown-dirty as dirt

            my neighbors daughter

her braces, she marionettes

like Brittney Spears
            in the Wal Mart uniform;

but I am in love
           
            with her fifty years

hence
when she has
grown fierce
           
            and penitent
as a reborn Emma Goldman.

I am looking for
something to love fiercely

            she calls back from
her future parking

            lot

dredging the hardtop

with hair
            like a weeping willow
 
Where in
the soul is the earth kept?
 
asks the tree
to me

the night swarms

            with 

its reverse light

the spring peepers

rage against the insult
of electrical progress

            one last time

I,  too, have grown into a bad prophet

            I tell them

I have forgotten
            like so many of you.


.

my heart breaks every time I touch the sea.

all these comings and goings, the tides

with their silver breath, the many-doored

fog in which all directions are one

the long sunrises that evaporate night.

the sound of gulls penduluming the air

chip all my memories into little pieces.

I will throw that glass into the waves.

the brine of saltmarsh leans inland

to touch my nose with the tip of its

dense tongue. it tastes like the sex

of primitive gods. the tidepool is

full of secrets. starfish are

stitching this fragile earth together.

if you meet me here, anything could

happen. we could get lost in it.

a hundred thousand years ago

the ancestors of whales returned

to the sea. they never came back.

their voices lengthened, their word

for yes stretched into hours, so long

so quiet you could lie down on it.  

imagine that the body
of a thing is inhabited
by the spirit of
another thing

and this is true
for all things―

for snow plows and socks
bridges and elephants
kazoos and staplers.

for instance
the body of a snowplow
is inhabited
by the spirit
of a parrot

the body of a birthday cake
inhabited by
a typewriter

the socks, spirit of a discarded
bowling trophy

and one day the snowplow
decides it is a parrot
and will not push snow
until the highway
department man
paints its beak
bright orange, yellow
and black

and one day you see
your socks
snake away from
your miserable feet
and leap for the top
of the bookcase

for even the watermelon has
its own green ghost, its true love.

people, too
are misinhabited

are lonely
their spirits
not their own

eventually they get the wish
to be something else
a doormat, a spider
a hurricane, a child’s doll
a slashed tire, a river
in Antarctica

            but imagine:
for some of us
spirits come and go
as if we were carpentered
of shutters or the sea
everything
staggers through us

like a drunken uncle
slamming eyelids & doors
our whole life shakes
for no reason
or smokes like a burning sofa
or erupts
with gills and fins
 
we mutilate
the clocks of our heads
we shoot holes
in aquariums
we baa or grunt or
nail ourselves to
matchsticks

we bathe
in kerosene

but maybe a few
so very few
so precious few
startled
by our bodies, our own
sweet apples
find the heart isn’t
a container but a channel
through which all
earth pebbles through

and our loneliness

where is
our loneliness? 


.

I. 
this is what I have learned from being a bear:

that I will move toward

the trap every time, even after the mangled

foot like a broken star

the buckshot-stung leg the scarified nose

a taste of honey is irresistible.

the instinct is this: to roar like a tuba

to bite the trap

to rip off the offending paw

and leave it as a dark fuck you

to the hunter. I have learned this as a bear.

I have also learned why there are no

three legged bears. 


II. 
one would think, so the mind

now human slippery and clever

avoid the trap, bargain with the hunter

or disappear into the forest of

wild honey and shadows that close

like wombs around the old hunger

or seek out the red stag that will

drive its tines in my flesh for why not

at least meat, rich, red, is worth

the suffering honey will not quench.

this is what I have learned from being

human. I have also learned

that at the end  of running 

and struggle I will look into the 

glass of my brown eyes and see 

a three legged bear.


III. 
there is more, if you can stand

the thought of it. wait a moment.

settle down into the long

winter of your thoughts

digest the fat of your longing

go deep into the slow dreams that

will teach you. wait. listen

to the snowflakes touch

their small sensitive feet on this

quiet earth.


IV. 
and now, if I am at last

awake and ready:

I will admit finally

how every square inch of earth

is honey how every square inch

of earth is trap how the two

love each other like salsa dancers

love hips. there is no escape

that is escaping enough there is

no bargaining that is bargain enough

there is no anger shattering enough

there is no sorrow drowning enough

to wash this pattern away. what then

knowing this I put it to

you my trap, my honey

and I yours: what will we

be to each other now sad-eyed bears

or clever human beings

or something else. to enter

the trap willingly not drugged or howling

to move as quiet as oil through the

rust on its mechanism together

parts of a whole. there is no greater love

no shattering more complete. 


V.

a constellation was placed in the sky

to lead us beyond forgetting

when we have forgotten. a bear, a hunter.

to see it as two parts is to become lost.

the pattern was carpentered of light

by the Makers of Light. in the end

there is no pattern and the light,

the blessed light, is everything. 

in the dream I rode slumped and dozing
bareback on the elephant. how I got there
feels beside the point: the skin like an old warm
glove heart thumping in my ear a sound like a
basketball dribbled in an empty gymnasium.
how light the burden of my body which I could barely
carry from room to room day to day without
dragging gouges through the carpet leaving an
unfinished array in my wake. and perhaps you
too have been lifted once or twice when your feet
evaporated and your heart melted like
salt and if so did you ever like I think how
everything all of it kneels to lift everything the way
the sun stoops on the horizon and hoists the blue
blanket sky over us all sans complaint sigh
did you ever think how everything bows
to everything each link in chain borne by
the next right down to atoms covalent
in their love for bearing carrying the form
absolute on their pinpoint electron zithered
backs and so when next the elephant arrives
for you respiring with lungs like a moon-sized drums
will you wonder how silly how foolish it is to
stand on your pride when the mountain itself
exalts in stooping?