I place one word slowly
in front of the other,
like learning to walk again
after an illness.
But the blank page
with its hospital corners
tempts me.
I want to lie down
in its whiteness
and let myself drift
all the way back
to silence. 

Nothing to tell. Nothing to desire.
A silence that is not unhappy.
Who will guess I am not
backing away? I am pleased
every morning because the stones
are cold, then warm in the sun.
Sometimes wet. One, two, three days
in a row. Easy to say yes and no.
Realizing this power delicately.
Remembering the cow dying on the ground,
smelling dirt, seeing a mountain
in the distance one foot away.
Making a world in the mind.
The spirit still connected to the body.
Eyes open, uncovered to the bone.

Hear me: sometimes thunder is just thunder.
The dog barking is only a dog. Leaves fall
from the trees because the days are getting shorter,
by which I mean not the days we have left,
but the actual length of time, given the tilt of earth
and distance from the sun. My nephew used to see
a therapist who mentioned that, at play,
he sank a toy ship and tried to save the captain.
Not, he said, that we want to read anything into that.
Who can read the world? Its paragraphs
of cloud and alphabets of dust. Just now
a night bird outside my window made a single,
plaintive cry that wafted up between the trees.
Not, I’m sure, that it was meant for me.

What could she say? Little money,
little chance for work, a drunk for
a husband she no longer lover,
and now she leaves her winter hat
on the train. Trains feel vast.
Devon's room—not so vast. But it
doesn't move, so she's sitting
there before he comes home smashed
and angry, or maybe he will just
fall down. She reads a few pages
of a book half-backwards. A
hopeless attempt to snap to, to
have something in this life pull
her out of this, like the moon,
the moon's a puller. Like the train:
the train's a puller of forgetfulness
and power and destination far into
the reaches of the forests. What
could she say? Oh she can talk to
herself, but now she's got to get
out, and words won't do this. Al-
most as it words make you stay more.
She doesn't even have a hat to reach
for so can she make the door? Oh
prayer for the hat to be a puller
for her even as it circles the city
or enters someone else's flat, hat
have an arm to keep her from his fist,
moon and train, moon and train, moon
and train: pull her, pull her, pull her.

After awaking,
I forgot for a moment
I was on the road—
still feeling comfortable
in the wake of my dream.

I am filled with love
as a great tree with the wind,
as a sponge with the ocean,
as a great life with suffering,
as time with death.

I am reading Li Po. The tv is on 
with the sound off.
I've seen this movie before.
I turn on the sound just for a moment 
when the man says, "I love you."
Then turn it off and go on reading.

will earth stop spinning?
will there only be hair left?
we are made of war—
it stays in the air, mixed with oxygen, we breathe 
it in and deploy it out.
our birth is easy on us 
but hard on everything else.

I go to the mountain side
of the house to cut saplings,
and clear a view to snow
on the mountain. But when I look up,
saw in hand, I see a nest clutched in
the uppermost branches.
I don’t cut that one.
I don’t cut the others either.
Suddenly, in every tree,   
an unseen nest
where a mountain   
would be.

I used to have tricks, dodges, a whole sackful.
I could outfox anyone,
double back, cover my tracks,
walk backwards, the works.
I left it somewhere, that knack
of running, that good luck.

Now I have only
one trick left: head down, spikes out,
brain tucked in.
I can roll up:
thistle as animal, a flower of quills,
that’s about it.

I lie in the grass and watch the sunlight pleating
the skin on the backs of my hands
as if I were a toad, squashed and drying.

I don’t even wade through spring water
to cover my scent.
I can’t be bothered.

I squat and stink, thinking:
peace and quiet are worth something.
Here I am, dogs,
nose me over,
go away sneezing, snouts full of barbs
hooking their way to your brain.
Now you’ve got some
of my pain. Much good may it do you.