There Were No End of Noes

Joy came to me.  I said, Now?  But yes is joy’s only word.  The wind says yes.  The earth says yes.  Even the distant sea says yes.  Under the waves the many armed yes, which clutches everything says, Yes.  Then two yeses meet when a shipwreck drowns.  Here, on dry land or here, in the trees, the singing yeses desire flight.  Joy lies on the ground.  It is a seed.  Now it unfolds on my tongue.  I listen for the rain.  Its pattering says, yes, yes, yes.  And yes came to me, and I was ready for its word.  When I was a boy, there were no end of noes.  But now my body floods with yeses even to the noes.

Sometimes It Smells like Despair

There is no argument that withstands a flood.  Stop here, I said to the waves.  And then I made a cross in the sand and said, God, help.  Soon my foot was gone.  And so I went walking on the stump.  You may say, O.  Or instead take note of my weeping and my limp and fear for your life.  It may be coming for you, and that it hasn’t yet doesn’t mean it won’t.  But I am safe today.  I am like a seal in a cove.  The sun is glistening everywhere like truth.  If I turn my head this way, glittering.  If I look up, only blue.  The tide draws in and out.  Sometimes it feels like a convenience.  Sometimes it smells like despair.

The Other Word for Paradise

This time it’s different.  I didn’t mean to say goodbye.  God is a door toward which the wind takes us.  Open it.  He is a gate.  Beyond the gate another gate until you reach the last.  Finally, when you least need it, the thing you couldn’t have asked for comes.  It feels strange now to accept it.  To look the man in the face and say, God bless.  I knew it was a wound.  Still, custom makes men say terrible things.  But not so when he wants to be useful.  Then he is dangerous.  Then he might offer his life.  It might have been a gift if I were able to accept it.  Thank you.  Thank you.  And then, Goodbye.  When I was young I used to sing a song about forgiveness.  Now I want to know the other word for paradise.

Who Wanted Everything

To the moon, I whisper, This?  She answers, This.  That isn’t it.  That isn’t what I want to hear.  And so I go under the house, where I know she doesn’t shine.  I go and count the beams holding up the world.  The furnace entertains a bluish flame.  I watch.  Tomorrow, there will be crowds of grass.  All dry and whispering, The, the, the.  It is the wind that makes them so articulate.  Otherwise, they too would be so dumb.  It is the wind the makes the trees stand bold against the sky.  I ask my shadow what he thinks of this.  And he, who wanted everything, points to another shadow overhead.  I should have known it would end like this.  It seizes me, and takes me up.  I watch my shadow run along the grass.  First it glides and then it disappears.

What My Children Must Think of Me

Let this one think I am a tyrant.  And this one think I am a king.  This one will be afraid of me.  And this one worry I won’t live long enough to see her wed.  And that one never understands.  Which hurts me most.  I will name her Sea.  And she, the quiet one, is Flood.  My favorite I call Moon.  We pace the house.  Even when she is supposed to be asleep, she wakes and comes into my room.  Her flimsy gown almost invisible.  She must be cold, but she is good and, though I never believe such stories, she says she has bad dreams.  Come walk with me tonight, but only for tonight.  Tomorrow, the sun dispels the dark, and you have another hemisphere to light.  And so we lived as long as we could.  Then she went her way, and I went mine.  This will be the only kind of parenting I know.  The shaping of the moon in lines.

The Bulk Still Lives

It makes me cry to think, Not that.  Whenever I look around I find at least one thing for which this might be said.  Isn’t there an exception to every rule?  The stars, for instance, and the stone.  And from that one, say, Christ, there comes a whole new hope.  Yes.  That would be nice.  It is enough to climb out on my roof and look.  I check off names as if it were a roster in my hand.  A clipboard of names.  A catalogue.  The night has always been.  And I and you and they have not.  Should it find wonder in our faces, too?  Shouldn’t she discover which one of us today rises first and shines most like magnitude?  Tonight another part of me is dead, and yet the bulk still lives.

It Lives on Sweetness Only

The groundhog knows what love is.  It holds him all winter and wakes him in the spring.  He may look thin and haggard and hungry, but so do I and what is my excuse?  And the hawk understands a little more of love than I could ever bear.  If he seized me now, I’d only scream a little.  Lovers talk about the moon and the sea, but they should talk instead about the humming-bird.  It lives on sweetness only.  And when its heart slows down it’s as if it weren’t alive.  But let me be like the ant, always busy.  Either walking crisscross through the desert of the ceiling or moving my antenna back and forth to warn my queen danger is near.

What Happens Next

I dreamed I died.  And that was a relief.  There isn’t any trying after death.  My soul was made.  How could death unmake it?  The book couldn’t fit inside the grave.  It had grown in the night.  The wind blew its pages around.  Had I been the tree after all?  A little of my former self remains.  And after all the storms and sunny days, was I the only one who couldn’t attended?  Last night, I dreamed I died and then awoke, not on the other side of death, but to see: the room exactly as I left it.  The furniture standing in its place.  An empty space beside me.  My wife busy downstairs.  My whole life lives inside this house.  My house contains what I call home.  The world lies where my stoop begins.  If I should die again tonight, I know exactly what to do.  If I should wake to find I am alive, then who knows what happens next.

How to Be Grateful and for What

When I look the pages over, I see I knew a lot.  I have read a thousand books.  The wisest men have chimed in on what ache ailed me most.  And I have said to them, So.  So.  The last word was mine.  Isn’t that what all fools want?  No.  What I wanted was to want the life I have.  Isn’t that a character of wisdom?  Isn’t that the one thing every saint must come to understand?  Or else who would give up the world to follow such a fool, whose life resembles loss so well?  I think I might have been a better man.  Once, I thought I was.  But now…   I look for gratitude.  The stars are shining here, even if elsewhere they have died.  That has to be something, I think.  I know.  Or else, it would be otherwise.  They have come for me to see.  For me to see and say, Hello.  I climbed the roof yesterday.  I went looking for another word.  I deserve a life but who am I to say which one?

How the Hawk Prays

I wrote this in my book one day after a long walk.  It said, This is how the hawk prays.  Instead of words I made a sign.  A cross.  It spiraled around the page.  He doesn’t kneel.  His is the prayer that asks for sky.  His is the prayer that asks for blue.  His is the prayer that wants to be fed by light and grass and a wide field.  The hawk looks forward to noon.  He wants to be the first one awake.  Tonight, I will go to find where the hawk sleeps.  I will whisper in his ear, How?  Then I’ll know his secret.  When I circle the things below will scatter, too.  And from that motion in the grass that isn’t wind I will be fed.  O, god of my god, let me confuse his shadow for mine.  Let me see how circling comes to a point, then stoops, then climbs, relieved.