The silence is only because I can't say,
can't describe

the sound the fog makes emptying into this valley.
I have no idea where it comes from.

Nor can I tell of
the space its leaving renders empty.

Feet tired, I walk.
I consider where you might be

(though I can't know)
and note the weary gestures

of the pines and hemlocks--
limp with no wind

and tired
from the mad choruses of sunlight that have

streamed through here daily.
And now rain.

I'm telling you, there is an exhaustion about them
and a pain more ancient

than the both of us,
than all of it.

Does their silence indicate acceptance?
They know, they just know. No more.

But water runs form leveled earth to soil
(the process intact nonetheless)

and my boots sink into ground that will be frozen
in a month.

Annunciation

Hearing only the rain and the Mozart quintet,
She stands before the mirror in the small room and
Combs out her hair and then holds it, head leaning to
One side, then does it again, thinking, The slow part
I love, the adagio largo lamentoso
Pianissimo cantabile. She does not think
Of him, there being no reason. For some time it
Has been this way: She hears the music and the rain
And nothing brings about an intrusion by
Anything else. This music is enough, but just
For now; she knows the spring will turn itself into
Summer by gradations of subtle miracles,
And the nights will deepen and she will sink into
Them like cool sheets. She will arise rested, burning
For new danger, for knowing again what she is.
"What a thing is man! I myself am man!" She says
It all softly, her hair feeling to her fully
As soft as the violins, as the small of her
Back felt to her lover's hand on the night when through
His bedroom window they could see fireworks over
The parade ground two blocks away. But that is not
Now. She thinks, she speaks: "I myself am enough."

To Michele

For these trees
the withering time is over now;
their leaves,
their colors,
long exiled from them,
lie in the many poses
of their still deaths.

A quarter of a mile away
is the river--
no ice on it yet,
but the water is black,
like it has no bottom.
You can't see this from the car
bridge five miles to the south;
your eyes must almost touch
the water itself.

And along the leeward shore
on the day I was there
were more canvasbacks
than I could count--
waiting, conversing, aware
of dangers I would never sense.
Most took off as I approached,
their bodies disappearing into
the white hills on the other
shore.
Some dove,
and I saw how the black water,
knowing her own,
will always take them in.

Today I have climbed the hill
hoping to see that nearby water
and check for signs of ice
or birds.
But I see only those same
naked trees--
spreading and still--
whose uppermost branches
look like capillaries
tunneling outward
from a common center.

You Are Gone, You Will Stay Gone

You are gone, you will stay gone, and I will
Soon step out into the rain or sun and
This will not change. I will look at a still
Pond surface after a storm and demand
Nothing. The hawk kills the mouse and knows he
Can kill no more; the ability to
Affect is gone. He does not mourn. I see
Now how the creation remains when you,
Part-Creator, are gone. Little-God! But
Why did you build a world only to leave
It bereft? Set it aflame, and in soot
And ash bury it. Flood it like a sieve--
But do not drain it; one who made so well
A Heaven can easily make a Hell.

For Whatever It's Worth

Don't get lonely in Vegas and decide
to walk five miles
to a downtown strip club
at one in the morning...
Don't fall in love with a dancer
who tells you about her two abortions
over non-alcoholic beers and never
cries once because she can't cry
anymore...
Don't threaten to kick the shit
out of the drunk pig who taunts her
for not being some airbrushed
impossibility from Playboy...
And don't--
under any circumstances--
walk back alone under the desert sky
to an immaculate hotel room
with an empty bed
and an unopened bottle of tequila
with your name on it.