poems46

CASCADILLA FALLS
I went down by Cascadilla
Falls this evening, the
Stream below the falls,
And picked up a handsized stone,
Kidney-shaped, and
Thought all its motions into it,
The 800 mph earth spin,
The 190-million-mile yearly
Displacement around the sun,
The overriding grand haul
Of the galaxy with the 30,00
Mph of where the sun�s going:
Thought all the interweaving motions
Into myself: dropped
The stone to dead rest:
The stream from other motions
Broke, rushing over it:
Shelterless, I turned
To the sky and stood still:
Oh I do not know where I am going
That I can live my life
By this single creek.
-----------------------
FANCY
Do you know what
that truth is,
what�s rightly
or wrongly said,

what is wiseness,
or rightness, what
wrong, or well-
done if it is,

or is not, done.
I thought.
I thought and
thought and thought.

In a place
I was sitting,
and there
it was, a little

faint thing
hardly felt, a
kind of small
nothing.
-----------------
FLOWERS
Light is around the petals, and behind them:
Some petals are living on the other side of the light.
Like sunlight drifting onto the carpet
Where the casket stands, not knowing which world it is in.
And fuzzy leaves, hair growing from some animal
Buried in the green trenches of the plant.
Or the ground this house is on,
Only free of the sea for five or six thousand years.
----------------------
IN THE WINTER OF THE 38TH YEAR
It sounds unconvincing to say When I was young
Though I have long wondered what it would be like
To be me now
No older at all it seems from here
As far from myself as ever
Walking in a fog and rain and seeing nothing
I imagine all the clocks have died in the night
Now no one is looking I could choose my age
It would be younger I suppose so I am older
It is there at hand I could take it
Except for the things I think I would do differently
They keep coming between they are what I am
They have taught me little I did not know when I was young

There is nothing wrong with my age now probably
It is how I have come to it
Like a thing I kept putting off as I did my youth

There is nothing the matter with speech
Just because it lent itself
To my uses

Of course there is nothing the matter with the stars
It is my emptiness among them
While they drift farther away in the invisible morning