VIII.

VIII.

1.

The ground itself is an uncertainty.

But you get up anyway, slowly at first

rise from it your honed ear balances

against the vertigo press with your feet

in the horrific loam of elsewhere. The world

never conformed to itself but weird, 

helterskeltered toward the plane of falling, 

into powerlessness feet move against, those 

little divining rods charged in mother walking.

Lay on the grass, on your back, until a bird comes.

Until a car or cow or stranger. Now wait until the rhythm

of what comes. Follow where they 

moved in you. This is the direction of your life.

2.

All day long I show you my secret allegiance.

You think I’m ignoring you; no more than any

roadside mailbox or sooty black sun rises in its 

incumbent mists, into the world our grey wave.

Your grey ways we owe each other more than

being part. Aloof in gravity alone. Rise

to each other. Levity. Sometimes people

prove better than things. That’s what better means.

There are two intimacies, intimate world and

how you give it away, as only you can

make the mailbox talk with letters.

That constitutes a third thing. How it was

you all along. The moon in another scandal.

3.

What can I do besides tell.

Statement.

Something for the hand,

feels good. 

Think close

what’s far off. “What’s far

if you can think it?” I want you

far in here.

I want to be you.

Ride moon back

down that strange flowering

tree they call your spine.

Only in you can I remember.

4.

Remember more about the pronouns that are the suffering 

of a variation. The moon scratching at your window, as Joel slips

some more cherry in the wood stove, how easy it was to cut.

To tell about the wood. Offer it. Smoke climbs to the embrace

waiting there. Maybe the moon is glad to have it back, 

and lets you sleep warm. Maybe it wants to help you 

find the common ground. Warmer. Closer,

opening onto the demesne, where you so badly wanted the images <<in

the book to bring you, where images grow. Get those stupid birds

to take off their flying and lead you. To pull down! Let the animals 

out of the clouds. Let the ground out of a burning tree. Walk the red carpet.

5.

Out of the northern mists, one finds their land.

Must continually rediscover, geese flying over

her perineum. St. Brendan, or some craftier religion

where you pretend to drown and she rushes

to you. Takes you into the mountains and dry

soul of her. A dry soul is best says Heraclitus.

Best for us drowners, tippy people

taking it on from the sides. A clever bird pulls

the strings to my body. I appear to drown, all lies,

this wobbly walk, this bodily trick. A wobble redoubles,

takes on its fullness, vortex around pivot

world turned into sea. Body is a lure to center

is mere soul-topology, covered in word sensors.

Words signal the drowning, lilt like body. 

Talk is somatic response. Means danger. Help.

6.

Perhaps you won’t be able to see

where the narrative veered from

that powerful inkling– a law of

poems, or is it measuring quanta?

dictates some friendly obscuring–

that a land came and retracted

from my measure.

But I will shore you where I can.

7.

The discovery is what changes.

Ontology of the particular personage

dictates what the voices say.

Each time the ghost authors

in you a system, a symphony

the music’s riposte

for silence to end. The last note

falls later, edges 

mercifully blurred, and the fragments

aloft, just enough stars to light

until you find you 

tugging at your inner shirt

sleeves, she comes and is

the moon, is the world’s ghost

leading you over the wet grass

to whatever it is she wants to show you.