It was raining.
I could hear the rain
taking the pins out of her mouth.
Soft rain became hard rain
so that hard things became soft things.
The wet leaves under the trees
became heavy as diapers,
the book left open
on the grass
could finally sink in her bath
without a word,
the way, after a hard day,
I rest my head on the edge
of the claw-footed tub and
my mouth falls open, empty
at last.
Actually I saw that in a painting
when I ducked into a gallery
because it was raining.
It is always raining somewhere,
somewhere the wells are filling
from above and from below.
Somewhere someone is sleeping,
somewhere the lady of the house
puts the alarm clock in a drawer
where she cannot hear it
then tells the children to be quiet
and stands there listening
to its tick.
It's like there's more oxygen
in the air or something
or 107 baby's faces have been enlarged
and are drifting across the sky
I also saw a leaf-blower
and all the dead leaves
looked like they were having fun
jumping around as if they were alive again
I think too of a certain recipe
that calls for eelgrass
which the scallops love to swim in
And on top of it all
a profound sense of nothingness
has come into play
so I tell everyone I was born
at sea among the meadow people
who never speak a word
that has not been repeated
over and over and over again
but still takes me completely
and by surprise
It is a beautiful day here in
Milford, NH
The warm of the sun feels
good on my back
The wild mountaintop flowers
are blooming in their wild glory
My face a thumbtack
in the earth
Do you want I should make
some rapt contemplation
descending into useless particulars?
I will be pressed also
when it's midnight
and snowing hard
I've seen her walking the streets
in her greatcoat, head down,
hair blown back. I've seen the dogs
straining at leashes
in search of her. Her perfume
is death, a black silhouette.
In May, she straightens up,
shortcuts through the hotel
lobby, losing her scarf
which was strangling her.
And then I lost her,
but wait—
Summer, my god here she comes,
floating on air—
I can only imagine what
she's been through,
reeking like that
of gardenia.
Playing horsey in the field
I galloped toward the trememdous
growth of the rhubarb.
My job was to make Mother happy,
to follow the sound of the thrush
into the woods so the innocent leaves
could swallow my laughter.
Twice I made Mother happy,
once when I brought her an armload of rhubarb
and once when I bought her five pounds of talcum.
Eventually I read Trakl: the mother moves through
the lonely wood of this speechless grief.
Eventually I wrote the powder of ill stars
falls on us, eventually she found and read
my journals, which were full of such stuff
so she burned them.