We knew our way

The sun remembers you

Slopes that were tufted, swaying

To the tune of one farmhouse,

One farmhouse or two

With sway-backed beam barns

–

This road was unborn then

And trees wandered to tracks

Bereft of trains

Where that one other road

Gravel, held houses in bends

Of dust and autumn leaves

–

The snow under our feet

Is no longer

And our laughter in the wilderness

From school to stove-side

Has been painted over

By roofs and asphalt unending

0700

The mat –

It need always be rolled

A different which way

To lie clean

You could tell how we are alike

If only

You would not guess

Ours

I think of the things

That get worn down helping us

Being what we need them to be

I keep the spoon

Although it is broken

And refuse any house that cannot house

The table, with its dented claws

The End Waiting (Lathe’s Vigil)

Up on the bare heights

I hold a decaying light

And live off Parnassus’ airs

Each night before dawn

Each hope before haunt

From the moss to the bedrock below

Out from the origin

You rewrote the word dilation

As a winding wearing in

Holding mirrors to our foundations

Herbertian stories wearing thin

And you gave a clever answer

“Why singe the tail for dreams

Dreamed up in coral bassinets

Before the sand became the sea?”

Your words may be the future

Sure as the summer rains

Yet they hold fractals of heartache

Sure as trees bloom outward in

Violet IV

Tell me with the petals

Floating upwards

The melody that no songbird

Could ever sing

You are on the katsuogi

Where the light breaks first

And surely from the light

You gather truth

Tell me where my teasing

Will be drawn down

And whether the rafters

Smell as sweet

*

Another Sunny Day