Presented in chronological order of composition:
FIRST SONG (1965)
BY THE HUDSON (1966)
PEONA TO ENDYMION (1966)
AFTER RAIN (1967)
TWO WINTER DAWN SONGS (1967)
WORDS (1968)
SEED (1968)
AFTER BECKETT’S QUATRE POEMES (1968)
ALBA (1969)
PICTURE WINDOWS (1969)
CITRUS (1969)
TO J. (1970)
PRIMER after Alden Van Buskirk (1972)
UNDER THE INFLUENCE (1973)
WEATHER MODIFICATIONS (1973)
NASA LENSES (1973)
DISCONTINUOUS CONTINUITIES (1973)
FEEDING THE ANIMALS (1973)
FATIGUE OF DAWN: A MELANCHOLIC FOR LADY DAY (1974)
TO C. (1974)
TO SAINT ANNE MY LADY (1974)
JULES & JIM: AN EXCHANGE OF LETTERS (1974)
ILE-DE-LA-CITE (1974)
SHIVA NATARAJA (1974)
TEA (1974)
MARRAKESH AFTERNOON (1974)
CHET BAKER GETS LOST (1975)
ON MORNING SHEETS (1975)
POINT PINOS (1975)
POINT LOBOS (1975)
ALMIGHTY VOICE (1976)
WHILE SHE LIES STILL (1976)
CENTRAL CALIFORNIA COAST (1977)
LONG TWENTIETH CENTURY (1978)
STATE OF THE STATE THE (1983)
PRODIGAL SON (1986)
ON MY SON’S SECOND BIRTHDAY (1989)
PRAYER FOR MY DYING MOTHER (1998)
UROBORUS (2006)
CLEARING & REGROWTH: THE SISKIYOUS (2006)
CAMPSITE 24 THE PINNACLES (2011)
POINT BONITA (2013)
ASH TREES (2018)
OLD MAN SAY-SO (2022)
LEAVES FALL (2022)
_______________________________
FIRST SONG
it takes us into its sleep
a white moth falls
from an overhanging branch
and makes delicate circles
we also are falling and drowning
how shall we land
make what rings
I made this song of my dying
1965
_______________________________
BY THE HUDSON
when
slow
emerge
from mist
two great blue herons
into mist
merge
slow
again
1966
_______________________________
PEONA TO ENDYMION
What strange restlessness
in your breast tonight
keeps you awake
possessing you
until you are possessed
and blind?
Toward what dream shadows
are you moving now?
In pursuit of whom or what
do you wander thus
while others sleep?
What strange visions have removed you from the rest
and when will you awake from this dream?
1966
_______________________________
TWO WINTER DAWN SONGS
I.
Clouds float
compose and decompose
in transient clusters
of concentrate matter
gray cirrus in blue sky
ceremonially
clouds float.
Snow settles down
dawn is long.
Where do those birds spend the night
snow frozen on their tails, see?
They loop and scissor white
I write this tale for the slate colored junco
who sit in twigs of stripped forsythia then shift
from nerve to nerve, do you see?
All sorts of junk fits in so you do see!
Mais, oui! Ye must be Francis of Assisi, si?
No no
just fool
feet play
sea snow
a drift.
II.
Crows fly out of east to west
their ragged wings drag night.
This belt of Earth turns from obscurity
pauses in chiaroscuro
rotates into light.
Playing winds
black crows scope
light upon a snowy branch
And fold in dark draped wings.
Serried
silent
clustered as snow
water flows down.
Pause winter dawn song.
See all flow.
1966
_______________________________
AFTER RAIN
You were waiting
with your secrets
while I groped.
Why did I try
to make it rain with my words, stones
thrown at skies
they fell back.
You knew all the while
trusting in touch
when we spoke with our fingers
clouds broke.
1967
_______________________________
WORDS
black
green
seen
heard
quaking
aspen
black
bird
herd
angus
grass
1968
_______________________________
SEED
Roots shall chew and skewer though soil
stalks spire and shoot through air
green sheathed husks be spun around
and earth rise up to sun.
1968
_______________________________
AFTER BECKETT’S QUATRE POÈMES
PARIS
All this unseen walking
beyond the river lamps
the body a banner of raw edged nerve
the brain a dim lantern
five windows dark with soot
unseen unheard
through the blows of a charcoal wind
it hurts to walk like this
sliced by rain and estranged in another man’s land.
ZURICH
Incurious
the dead shingle
the dark lake
the give and take of waves
anonymous
the boats
the strings of lights
voiceless faceless
far from the living and the happy music.
1968
_______________________________
ALBA
Fall of your hair
raining in the courtyard
the idea of parting
curtain of hair
scent
the dead are put in rows and call these streets Manhattan.
1969
_______________________________
PICTURE WINDOWS
Tonight
all things speak of themselves
quietly
Gauguin in Tahiti
Seurat in France
Nascita di Venere in Roma
her breasts
her
her white neck
now I am with ones
who stare at Moon
strong pull.
1969
_______________________________
CITRUS
I am eating the grapefruit you gave me.
I peeled back the rind to get in.
I pulled at the pink flesh, so fresh,
the fat petals pushed back:
in the open stands up the red core’s shred, so delicate,
and the scent of the delicious citrus.
I am inside the gift
and the juices I am drinking
of the great fruit.
1969
_______________________________
TO J. after Robert Kelly
Tips of white pine attenuate in water beads
and I imagine you standing in that light
your fingers playing that music
fascicles of pearl, fascicles of pearl.
Where we stood last night
the evening turned Hudson waters
to curtains of gold and tassels silver
copper beads strung westward
as light and river fabrics knit.
It smells like a summer night you said
sundown feathers of last daylight
golden across your reddened face
sun going down beyond the Catskills
blackbirds ribboning the darkening sky
and the night before us.
This morning at this window opening westward
the breeze turns the leaves’ white sides
and turns a will in me
to let the singularity of our circumstance unfold
the dignity of plants the stance
of trees the attitude
of living flowers,
Eros’ scattered seeds become these roots.
And do you think we are anything
if not his petals seen?
1970
_______________________________
PRIMER after Alden Van Buskirk
He lays a head
by the radio
to dream by Debussy
the LAMI dream
the thermostat thwicks
a reminder
lampdesk
boneclock
marrowfed
words bleed black
on yellow paper
against the unbearable sangfroid
care.
1973
_______________________________
UNDER THE INFLUENCE after Paul Blackburn
If I embarrassed your lady with my eyes
it was due to the placement of your hair
whole handfuls of arrogant blonde
tossed back and streaming past me
a city kite flying silver against the sun.
You needed no hand and were all fashion
as you led me though the passage
with your new train of fools
until I was the one permitted
to hold open the door
as you met my enchantés with désolées
and flew away.
1973
_______________________________
WEATHER MODIFICATIONS
Even after sitars are let loose on Western ears
conquistadors of an architectured populace
program to determine how it should be wrapped
provided trained dogs fetch tossed sticks.
Somebody (they) is building the city this way (against nature)
while professors of commerce hawk word salad
teaching each to put a name on the orange
and jack up the price.
There will be units to wear this climate control
consumers adapting political deadlights
the mannequins are already on display.
Sometimes I feel like an orphan without dead rites for my parents;
at the electronic vendor’s window I am that child.
1973
_______________________________
NASA LENSES
grind us to an ancient time
the Earth is round no doubts about
its blue green O
circling in on it
from the other side of clouds
we are in the aqua swirling now
1973
_______________________________
DISCONTINUOUS CONTINUITIES after Éluard
I have to speak myself that
sea parents us this
is whatever you think of next
care to rise another degree up Mount Abstraction?
this is not a fit not a rapture not anything we can name
yet even you say it’s just the top of his head this
is not what I think of next
what is not artifice what
this body is swelling to tell the whole
to say what I don’t know fills a book
to sing when veins dance breaking silence
puts a sort of music to the ears
when all that is said is all I
do want to be awake continually I
do want to extend this thee into yet another
when dreams are not asleep when
all that I am flows over the edge of a single bowl now
that has passed into the world and passes through still
a sense of seasons to endure
where history decays into dawn
a sense of seasons to endear
profiling language as we go the poem
caught in the ear up the throat off the tongue
by way of hand out
to those separate seas
1973
_______________________________
FEEDING THE ANIMALS
Kettle softly calling
completes peyotea night
a triskelion of cats at the tin plate
the fire needs attention repeat.
*
Silver dust flakes the herd’s heads
having at hay mechanically
I lay my knife in the stream of the real
the moon bleeds out the white meadow
this was to be the alchemical dawn song
but it’s going to be ring false
if we look for gold only.
*
The trembling pink-eyed rabbit doe
the rooster’s statue solitude
the eyelash of an angus calf.
*
Are these trees he wonders of green reflections
not knowing what
they are.
1973
_______________________________
FATIGUE OF DAWN: A MELANCHOLIC FOR LADY DAY
Kisswoons
roses
silk gauze
hearthink
oil voice
wrap me in a cloak of
a lifespan grieving
for all it will never know.
Time eats us
the fire licks itself to death
wears no face
whose eyes we can see through.
Lover I have yet to meet
forgive the adieu in our first kiss
I have gone out inside myself
the black stream bleeds.
1973
_______________________________
TO C. after Robert Creeley
Love which is not mine
who can speak your names
the hours after you go away are candlelit
with nap-tranced verbal patternings
still your fingers sculpt me
into yet another spectrum of we
who will be starfish
at the bottom of anonymous
the hours after you go away remain
staring into darkness
along lines of the believing solo I.
*
That goddess rising in me
her ancient Cytherian song
the moment her foot touches land
Love’s flood begun again
I can see this moment
a wash of little histories out to sea
dance my heart dance out
my throat by way of hand dance out
the river that flows of its own accord.
*
This body yearning
reaches out inside its skin
to touch you across the night
though evening company keeps us apart
your presence here
brings new Love notes to the fore
if an afternoon’s pleasures could ever be told
I might shatter with words
of a whole never-able-to-be
now I simply wish
to kiss you with awareness
of a beauty all too passing
the milk spilt in the alleyway
after I left you bedside
will be enough to feed the birds of change forever.
*
Tonight
after you went away
I pissed the wall
glad to be rid of intensity
I headed downtown
looking for a jazz room to repair
but sidewalk suck fuck talk
drove me back to private streets
and your names came.
*
More tender distance still
that seeks to sing the good in evening meters
tonight address me Love
and steal away the blissless solitude
I willing let go
past all retreat.
*
O the most welcome one
you never even let your shoulders down
and left before the music was done
now I want to be alone
or so stoned ages rock me in their arms
no more the cricket thick white night
attending your arrival.
1973
_______________________________
POINT PINOS
O ancient of sea lioness swim sleek
through deepening lavender shoals I
would tell you what happens
when the wind is so up gulls stop, caught in their flight
turn a wing and find themselves flung back
along the line, waves swell
reflecting abalone suns
across slick as a gray whale’s back, retreat
to sea smashed rocks a foot kicks off
mussels washed back off into
the back
off into the
sea.
It’s not going to take a lot of
take a lot of concept of
of concept of
unlearning right now.
Have you seen the pool in the rocks beyond sight?
Have you cried for gulls in stormy weather
when nothing but the winds’ echoes come to call?
when we are food savaged on sea rock
when we are salt the sea anemone sucks
there are waves and there are waves I
speak as one now
in the mystery of matter.
Tired rock faces whatever weathers.
1973
_______________________________
TO SAINT ANNE MY LADY
That dying dawn I heard cry out your mappemonde
and Christophoros paused midstream
sitting here lighting your candle
to enter nearer your heart
that you may color a way through black white shadows
calling for your lost one: A MON SEUL DESIR!
1974
_______________________________
JULES & JIM: AN EXCHANGE OF LETTERS
From the Rhine chalet:
Mon ami,
I’ve tried to drink alone
from the quiet coffin full of words
which waits beside my private door.
Aide-moi, aide-nous, viens ici!
From the Paris apartment:
Mein freund,
your wood desk’s words recall me to another misty train trip
as Gilberte’s body before dawn
but serves to remind me of that other ivory trot step.
The upturned sculpted eyes of her stony usage foretold all: j’arrive!
1974
_______________________________
ILE-DE-LA-CITÉ
Space is general
the site specific
where the Seine parts off the Vert Galant.
What is this tip called?
Where the dead fathers
gather after the dead mothers
in everlasting longing for this place.
1974
_______________________________
SHIVA NATARAJA
Shiva will be wheeling in a sun’s circle
as our curfewed Blue Danube waltz
is forever undone.
1974
_______________________________
TEA after Paul Bowles
Cat’s black sheen curls
in a pool of light, its tail curves
in the penumbra, breathing
shadow pulsing
a circle of candlelight about self-consumed.
The night is fading in
the glass, the moon is silver
the sliver is in the is.
Point to anything go
white night like the sound of like
clock tick stars click out there is in here.
Have we been sitting here a very long time?
Daylight, no longer night
a crescent of white sugar dissolves
amber swished about the glass tossed out
scatters chips mirrors of broken light.
The sun’s rays refracted how
can about to be?
No one will ever know you
will never be known.
Let, get, forget.
The sky is blanching out
in morning’s crown of light.
1974
_______________________________
MARRAKESH AFTERNOON
My own deprivations
are as severe
if more discreet
than that public man
who raves sun-blasted streets
a will to meet you
who can’t be met
that no amount of hash can dull
through the zebra shadowed souks
behind my invisible veil
in search of you
I pen the blind man’s cane across a white page
tapping for your light.
1975
_______________________________
CHET BAKER GETS LOST
Tone pinpointing pain’s relief
from pain release plaisir
into their ears
croon this tune
too all too also all too
muting
seducing
confusing
reduced
blame it on my use blame it
on my broken tooths.
*
Seeking sun
or shade
weather depending
the white lizard
dead or alive
stone cold.
*
Spoils
spoiled
spilt
split.
1975
_______________________________
ON MORNING SHEETS
The guitar music he put on
spins its disks out into the room
yet her divided will will not let her
read Love’s letter his body writes
she walks instead where rain blows yellow barley wet
beside him
in blue grey shadow
her sleep print is still impressed
beside the bed
the blood red rose
wears the worm’s scar
he lies down thin leaden lines along the tree’s receptive skin
what song the field sings to her
he cannot hear
only the output of autoerotic words
soothes his yearning flesh
he lies
down thin
leaden
lines
along the tree’s receptive skin.
1975
_______________________________
POINT LOBOS
It’s a bright lit path
that leads through the trees
that lead to the rocks
that shift the colors of fire.
We have made it
off the military bases
past the art galleries and crisis centers
to this wonder: what other deer grazed here when?
Within the thick Amerindian
below the smoothed sloped hills
beyond the horse’s dream of beige
we have made it to this wonder:
that we are the voice of things
embedded in a world of things
before I was another.
1975
_______________________________
ALMIGHTY VOICE (to be sung as an early American hymnal)
Almighty Voice killed a cow, killed a cow.
Almighty Voice killed a cow, killed a cow.
Almighty Voice killed a cow, killed a cow.
Put him in a jail but he got out somehow.
100 to 1 were the odds that night.
100 to 1 were the odds that night.
100 to 1 were the odds that night.
Women and children came to watch the fight.
Almighty Voice went to hide around the bend.
Almighty Voice went to hide around the bend.
Almighty Voice went to hide around the bend.
Mounties moved in and that was the end.
By the morning light one Indian was dead.
By the morning light one Indian was dead.
By the morning light one Indian was dead.
Justice had been done the history books said.
Almighty Voice killed a cow, killed a cow.
Almighty Voice killed a cow, killed a cow.
Almighty Voice killed a cow, killed a cow.
Put him in a grave but he gets out somehow.
1976
_______________________________
WHILE SHE LIES STILL
Black swans cruise the neon waters flowing through her legs
seagulls circle the currents of her windy heart
and herons brush wings against her rib basket of bone.
His hands are mourning doves hovering at her neck
his tongue a hummingbird sipping at her skin
his lips mockingbirds ringing at either ear.
A magpie folds in white spotted wings, she wakes
surprised to find an iridescent tail
fanned out across her breast.
1976
_______________________________
CENTRAL CALIFORNIA COAST
Across the arid coastal hills
black bulls range
and brown horses browse the plaid.
Where stones are stacked at the kine crossing
I have known the cold of Orion’s silver blade
and shivered for sleep amid the Seven Sisters of the Pleiades.
The moon is a mirror opening.
The sun is a window opening.
Praise the days that survive you.
1977
_______________________________
LONG TWENTIETH CENTURY
When there wasn’t time
when at any second
between wars
the sound of sirens
shifts at the factory.
Long twentieth century
when the counselors told the rulers
let the people chew their tongues.
1978
_______________________________
STATE OF THE STATE THE
Rumors are
West Berkeley High will soon be closed down
its rainwater gutters brimming over
with trash to that effect
what remains
up against the wall art
portraying Atzlan prisoners
with visitations from Senorita of the Thorny Red Rose
encircled by Dancing Turtle
whose belly may be a spiral of rebirth
battered by this wind ripping off
whatever’s not locked down
the rock hit sheet metal turban vents turn
“JUAN RUIZ IS” what
the graffiti hasn’t finished
building the boarded up
dope down drink up
is down to you
kids gang banged by that wind.
1983
_______________________________
PRODIGAL SON: THE DREAM
Estate in ruin
father a suicide
mother gone off half-mad.
Beside the fallen house
the path narrows to a pool.
“The water from the earth
goes down a long way.”
Reflecting clouds breeze by overhead.
“You have next to forgive them
for abandoning you
in life and in death.”
1986
_______________________________
ON MY SON’S SECOND BIRTHDAY
We are forever one and one
and one by one we learn
to care for one another
once we’re gone.
The mother wound leaves the first scar
here’s a cure:
at the head of his bed
I’ll set a sprig of deep rich red
torn from the flowering plum
which burst that day of blood
our dead forefathers blossomed once again.
1989
_______________________________
PRAYER FOR MY DYING MOTHER
Even as your fingers lose grip of the white blossom
a sign for all who see that
in the ditch outside
an old egret appears
to have lost strength enough to stalk
after its own stabbing eye.
Feathers soiled, it stands
stilling itself
to remind us of an old egret
reflecting upon the red mud ground.
Now you are in flight
whitening wings, trailing light
becoming the sky, becoming the air we breathe in
you transform yourself before us.
The bird leaves its body
and is purified
purifying us.
1998
_______________________________
UROBOROS to Nancy Boffey 1925-1998
I can no longer carry you along
the whole must off now
and I go on without you, alone
yet you will beckon me back
to sing with you those old false notes
from our favorite book
how I would rescue you
bring us through to glory
and we would be together, forever at last
but no
looking back I see
my skin sloughed off
along the way.
2006
_______________________________
CLEARING & REGROWTH: THE SISKIYOUS after Gary Snyder
This is the way I want to die, not afraid
of what big bear might be
around the bend
but brought by a quaking blossom down
to the forest floor, arrested
by a lily’s filaments
faintest green within its matte mauve globe
where one outsize black bee shakes and does not fly out.
Having hiked deep into this complexity of trees
recalling simple names and human uses
for this fern and that shrub
these seeds and those cones
and what of those pubescent horsetails insistent out of Whitman’s muck?
“The spirit is as real as dirt,” Muir said
or is said to have said
or perhaps it was said of him
who cares who now?
Binoculars
magnifying lens
eye glasses
set aside.
Alive
awake
aware
listening to air
riffles between ears and firs.
2006
_______________________________
CAMPSITE 24 THE PINNACLES for Condor #43
listening to owls
listening
to us
*
at half its height
the ghost pine broken
stands still
*
what hand moves so that
set points shift
and whose
*
great horned owls sound off
ravens clack
flickers drum the day breaks with jays
*
flex your blue branched legs
flap your black tented wings
fly back out of here
into the whole
2011
_______________________________
POINT BONITA: INSTRUCTIONS FOR MY SON
Stand one foot on diabase, the other
on sandstone straddling the fault line
between breathing waves harboring seals
the islands westward, eastward
closer in, the inland coves.
Stand then toss my ashes out, down
upon the rocks with a prayer, that’s
my final wish, asking birds seals sea what
remains what remains what remains
when winds are so up gulls stop
caught in their flight, flung back
upon the cliffs.
Ashes on the tongue
let these last words be written on the wing.
Your trail back
proceeding you
is what remains.
2013
_______________________________
ASH TREES
Ankle deep in the litter of dead letters
too old for new tears
I hear their leaves
falling to the floor
perennial
as winds of winter
pruning deadwood
to the ground
yet
can I forget or forgive
the once despised
carry only the ones beloved
as long and as far
as I go on?
2018
____________________________
OLD MAN SAY-SO
[after reading S. Kessler’s Garage Elegies]
TOWN
I can’t deal with this self-checkout
shit’s all ads and damn ads and more damn ads
and round and round and around
the time you think maybe they’re done
they dare you to buy in or opt out—
but out or in of what?
This must be what they call the point of purchase
where you lose your grip on things
standing still. The signal is on to cross but
where’re the keys, where’s
the car parked, which
way’s home?
HOME
Why do I bother with papers when
they’ve got it all wrong
blaming the language
not their own misuses of it
and pisspoor imaginations?
But there you go again
turning on the news, wondering
is it just me whimpering
or is this it, the Big Bang
at the end of our story not the start of it?
Anyway, they say,
you can’t step into the same river twice so
I’ll let my eternal presence flow downstream
put my personal devices on deaf & dumb and
take a nap, kissing that noisy busy bright new world of theirs farewell.
Jan 2022
____________________________
LEAVES FALL
turn red
yellowing to brown
old love letters
too old for new tears
deadwood
littering the ground
never to green up again
2022
____________________________