AFTER TARJEI VESAAS

It’s bright like the first day in May, 
end of evening. And the square of light
backed into a corner bleeds out
from your yard to the fields. The light
is gone. Now you’re like a figure
in some long-forgotten book. 

This yard will never be unfamiliar. 
Soft grass to call you home, soft earth,
and the houses in late evening outline. 
You could draw them from memory,      
haunted houses with corners
made of stone. 

It’s good to sleep behind stone.
You’re in the yard and you know this,
you can tell everyone about this.
It’s so quiet you’re the only source of sound.
Children, adults, in search of flawless sleep
run too fast for the arms of summer.

ODE PINK SNOW

You shake your head clean off 
            and on like a dog
                       in the miserable era
               alive in the old way     
    face-to-face with the one-note
                             sky.

        Maybe change creeps up
                                       stays loose and aloft
                     lays eggs underground
                            another mutant in the truth hut
                 clean and realistic 

                                       the proper reduction
                                                of spring.

        You and King Midas
                               on Weston Rise playing truant
                   spray light horizontal  
                                          on my vertical clothes
                        by the lame blue railings
                                                 built to mimic the sea  

                         schemes none of us agreed on
                                          now the flowers peel off
                                 at incredible scale 
                                        and gulls rip the seeds out   

                           the poets who failed to save us
                                                  break breadsticks in sync
                                 pausing only for breath
                                                             and self-admiration
                                 while the abseiling workers
                                             who keep the place clean
                                                           keep breaking their necks
                                                                        in the lobby.

        You should get a new hobby in the wine bars
                     drunk at the christening 
                                               on idiot sleaze
                                  chasing prose to buy time
                                                      before turning to God
               scrawling death
                                   to false poetry 
                                               in the margins of your books 

        But I had absconded
                       I was already gone
                                       strung out on burnt tongues
                                                       in the last March sun
               where gulls rip the seeds out
                               and we’re heavy with ivy
                                               and zero leaf cover 
                                                       getting busy with the season 
                                                                    aloof.

        I grew to hate my own style 
                               loathed everyone else’s 
                                               hot air in the doldrums 
                     a vehicle for truth 
                                     stalling for time 
                                                    at the drive-thru counter
                                 threw sugar at implied
                                         decrescendos.

                                                            I loved rare earth
                                         loved common earth too
                                                  hid feathers and eggshells 
                                                                in the nameless fields
                          threw stones high
                                         and ran with closed eyes
                                                       to the plain wire fence 
                                 held up with wooden posts
                                             with my arms out aerial 
                                                                      kid aerial breeze 

                poem like a shovel
                               or a graveside oration 
                                               to drown out the chainsaws 
                       and the white wine people 
                                       who would by being silent
                                                       not dissolve 

        or get thrown out
                       of the well-appointed running club 
                                       struggling to keep up
                                                      with a moving car 
                               on the banks of the river                                       

                        where my standards were vanquished
                                       by slow animal reprise  

                                                             the Ortiz sailors 
                                            with their tunafish sail

                           come back to dry land
                                          carrying all your possessions
                                                    in a lone plastic bag
                                  lined with marble and ash                   
                                                             for the last time snow
                                                                    in recession.           

       But this wounded posture’s got
                              to stop   
                                               like a dog in a forest
               when the scent gets cold 
                                       and power’s short rodeo
                       comes to an end.

                                There is some paper on the floor 
                                                             for burning charcoal.
                               There is a ball in the corner
                                               of the Garden of Eden. 

                                 My dog 

                                        is buried there  

                                                        in orchid lip
                                               cuckoo spit 

                                                        as harp to harpoon 
                                             or sick to music 

       outside and strong
                       I sung this energetic fable 
                                       with my mouth closed                                                

                                                       my mouth full of pink snow
                       and my head is also light
                                       in the flux of arctic sea ice 
                                                  the whales yawn softly
                               flesh before bone 
                                               I put a roof on a wall
                                                                     with a hole in it.

THE SAME LANGUAGE
For Tomas Weber 

Everything I learned I also forgave,
determined to be valid & 
proper in the eyes
of an exposed nerve-ending
in tears.      It’s like catching
a disease or throwing a ball
to a dog at the edge
of a foot-pier. Water is the test
of everything. Why you know this
is the whole fucking problem.

A book you once owned 
someone stole it. A book you once
wrote someone lost it. I still have
these big pockets, you can
stuff in them backwards 
whatever it is that you want.  In 20
10 it was obvious, we were out
on a limb, we were shaking our hands
to the bone. It gets so lonely 
being brilliant, so stupid,
so stupid and brilliant alone. 

TO THE NAVIGATORS

As soon as your vision is cool—
but it doesn’t get cool it stings, burns,
like the thought you can’t have
which makes itself felt, all day distracted
by news of sinking ships. Pick any year
and move towards it. You can be the one
who turns the wheel in times of doubt
and soft distress. There is a rose-pink brick
with your name on it. I am not absolutely
systematic. But who can really do this
with any such courage, half dumb luck
half armed to the teeth, 
                      the stolen valour of a clam
in the wrong type of water, these people
cut loose when it suits them. It’s a slow
way of learning what it means to learn
something and then learn that you knew it
to start with. I lay my notebook flat
across my chest, knock from both sides,
climb out. You steady my hand,
my hand steadies you. After you die
you will feel more subcutaneous and reckless
as it goes. But first the leaves will have to drop,
and then the branches have to fall. 
We are basically devoted to this one great idea:
that the air is eventually on our side,
and we can use it as another emotion. 
My breath on your name to keep you afloat,
a soft new anger, the temerity of song.