Toward End Time
Over and over in the milk white breast of time
I look forward to good-byes physical as dew
in the mountain mornings on strange rough grass
whose colors turn as the sun creeps into full day.
Over and over on the wide mothering belly of time
I look forward to good-byes small as the whisper
of beetles whose casings litter the forests of days
bent by the summer thunderheaded storms.
Over and over from the waist down toward time
without stopping til the moon mellows full
after beginning a small sliver in the night,
I look forward to good-byes. Good-bye to being
without time for the circumference of you;
Good-bye to wondering whether again you
and I in the ripeness of flesh will cling
as we had—rich with sweat,
with odors of love; you and I, again.
Again waiting for the breath that breaks water,
that orders the moments between life new
and life past, over and over, again.
Domus
He loved no place for what it was
but what he could make of it
I recall a wondrous instant: father planting trees
around two stories tall a dwelling of brick brightened
with roseate windows made of glass, and hard-wooded
floor parquetry from discards; with neighbors from birth
until death. we gathered and we sang, we sang sweet
tunes—the last time such airs were sung—for traveling,
whose rhythms were for wagon wheels and ocean waves.
he made a strange form as if roof and wall -
it shelters; we called "house"; it became “home”
nor loved he a man for who he was
but for what he might become
I recall a wondrous instant: father planting trees—
plum, almond, peach, and apricot—around that house
of brick two stories tall with windowpanes of glass
and hard-wood floors while neighbors who'd announce
our future births with pagan song and Christian toasts
gathered and sang sweet airs that none might sing again,
rhythms from the roll of wagon wheels and ocean ships.
He met neighbors—with bulky shoulders, massive necks,
broad-chested, full of toughness, health and strength
like animals and trees of the wet North.
Each face is like a country:
plain, an open or a wild waste.
He loved no place for what it was but loved
for what he could make of it; nor loved
a man for what he was but for what he could
become—a wondrous instant, I recall
I was among the guests;
beer and wine drank I;
and, what I saw, I put
into these very books
under the thatch of a roof.
It was as if our feet had never touched
the earth; as if no one had come our way.
Revolution in his grasp, his planting,
and his song.