The ice traces the trees
Like a boy on his knees
Tracing a picture in a book.
When he asks his father to look
His father sighs and puts on his glasses.
When his enthusiasm passes
He returns to his bouncing checks.
Father and son bend their necks.
Winters and winters hence
A man leaves the house he rents
And walks across the yard.
Life has grown too hard.
His death shakes the ice from the tree,
Revealing the real beneath the tracery.
The poet should be
The blazed tree
That guides the old
Couple to the waterfall
On their anniversary
And not so much
As shiver when
The World comes
Dragging its ax
Through the leaves
And even when the World
Heaves its first swing
Into the outermost ring
The poet has spent all
Year putting on
The poet should stand
Still as they stood
The day they were blazed
By the young couple
Who wanted to be sure
They could find it again
Yes even as they
Begin to sway
And the World
Gets out of the way
Laved in lather,
Mouths frothing green
Around the gnawed bits,
The horses are better
Off in harness
Than their master,
Who hasn't been paying
Attention to where
They're going.
Wendell was hit too
But the car knocked him
Clear of harm
While you went under
The truck as if for shade
You who had come to him
When he called you
The way my dog
Comes to me
Came to rest finally
Under the limestone slab
Dad laid and that I grew up to
Have to mow around
Covered in grass clippings
The edges nicked white
I dreamt there was a graveyard
Under the graveyard,
Where the dead are
Completely naked,
Laid in a single layer,
Their warm flesh just touching.
In the dream I knew their bodies
Would never rot, packed careful
As peaches nestled in tissue paper
For overnight shipment by rail,
Arriving by morning
Barely bruised.
Started drinking at six this morning.
I'm getting shitfaced down here.
Consider this your warning.
Go ahead and ignore me, see if I care.
I'm getting shitfaced down here.
Fuck your trucks full of sand.
Go ahead and ignore me, see if I care.
Always have had a crush on your land.
Fuck your trucks full of sand.
Bag that shit up and form a chain.
Always have had a crush on your land
And I binge on rain.
Bag that shit up and form a chain.
I'm on some Bible-shit now: I curse thee.
I binge on rain
And drinking only makes me more thirsty.
I'm on some Bible-shit now: I curse thee.
Don't tell me to go back to bed.
Drinking only makes me more thirsty
And I'm off my meds.
Don't tell me to go back to bed.
I've got records to break
And I'm off my meds.
Always did wanna be a lake.
I've got records to break.
Consider this your warning.
Always did wanna be a lake.
Started drinking at six this morning.
One day you'll be walking along
When all of a sudden the year will turn
And pull the gun of autumn on you,
Composed of leaves slick with rot.
Don't run. Reach out and slowly
Peel the leaves off layer by layer,
Revealing that there was no gun,
Just cold air in the shape of one.
I dreamt I was sharpening tools
With a man I didn't know
In a quonset hut in Missouri.
He was a big man in bib overalls.
I was someone he knew's friend.
They weren't our tools.
It was so hot I was worried
I'd faint and cut my head
On some edge I'd just sharpened.
But what was harder to take than the heat
Was his silence. I asked him
His name, where he was from,
Whose tools we were
Sharpening, but he just kept
Spitting in their faces
Like Jesus to make them see,
Then setting them to the grinder
So they threw orange sparks
That dimmed in the dust
Like stars at dawn.
Only one of us stepped foot
Out of that shed to feel
The grasshoppers lurch
Against his legs as he swung
The scythe through the grass
Like a man looking for gold
Fillings at crash sites.
I climbed the hill of the Underwood
To the green vowels that grow
Under the dead elms of the numbers
But, finding nothing, came kicking back
Down through the underbrush of consonants
To the sandbar of the spacebar
Where the river used to run.