Poetry | March 01, 1985

Meadow with Standing Crows

After living in the sprouting desert there is nothing

like the thought of sweet rain falling into a salty bay.

Rather than bear the farthest touch,

rather than be rain, having been

neither of this world nor mad as it turns

I saw someone had bitten your neck near the baby

hair, and also your shoulder. Why does it show,

is it of the heart, is it mindless, jealousy,

where nothing moves in a field in a world, and it is morning?

Even though you never came after me

Summer, nor called,

not once when I said not to, like finally

stepping over water after contemplation of it

as sand, two crows in the moans of the salt

water in my head answer for whom are we mysterious

 

Imitation at Twilight

In the Pacific Northwest

where he probably never was

 

or else never lived

salmon spawn to die.

 

Let them be. Well then

what if I walk out

 

to be alone

& meet the only two people I owe

 

in this town downtown? I’ll be damned

& I’ll be what my girl tells me

 

the number of damned breweries in & around

La Crosse & Eau Claire Wisconsin make,

 

enough drunks spawning enough lies for a truth,

her birthplace. “It isn’t that I can’t,

 

I refuse,” overheard,

like what are you doing one day

 

where you know you started

& the sky has all but cleared.

 

Lightly out of a sadness

I end up leafing my favorite

 

poet’s last book in a cold snap

in June, the solstice for all that

 

matters. The one madrone

out front in twilight must have been

 

at one time struck in a storm,

half gray guts now & vermilion.

 

Its oily leaves lean south

from this hillock. Which is about

 

what I picture dead

James Wright doing,

 

the wanderer the saved

bow to

 

burning for his living

days.