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          The stream

line of our direction says

all we know.

FORTYSIX

I.

If I turn lightly at an unknown

sign that points a way we

hadn't hoped to go,

if I turn

fast and reach

colors we hadn't thought to see,

if I glance

     aside to see you turn

with me

     --but no--

and call

     --but no--

it floods up

suddenly:

                I knew

that sign without

you.

ii.

I want to turn far

down in deep

waters where dolphin

dreams are.

iii.

                             Old trees

make space around them where

no others thrive,

                        stand alone

in the passer's eye;

                              only

their own leaves' whispers tell

them what line their new

shoots are scraping now against

the sky.

              Among

faces that slip down along

their bones, I am distinguished too

by distance from the next on

either side.

                  Old trees hide

hollows between roots or

at the heart while branches

point up and away.

                             My arms

too sign devious past my face:

look away, look away, look

away!  But some

days there are no other ways to stare, and

not enough eating, songs,

drinking, stories, leaves to cover

over this crater.

FORTYSEVEN

Great time disintegrates the known

city.  Death's neighborhood,

peopled now after my own heart,

thickens towards visibility.  In this

my dark age, in the long

turning away from the seen to the glimpsed (as

                                     Continue   The Year of This Snapshot

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