that I am using a pen.
I thought no one
still… he says. Then,

in a palace that was built for books,
a photo gallery documents
public spaces in decay

in cities fallen, falling,
Buffalo Detroit Cleveland Gary
Hammond Chicago — like the cry

of a conductor on a long train
on a long gone edge of my
life, and I am moved to tears
by the vision inside St. Stephen’s,

frozen there in ink on paper, a witness
still, and I think these old cities
falling are made martyrs by
an empire out of time.

across half of Missouri.
I was ready to wait it out, blinded
by water like a wall. But the sun rose

again, and I drove on. No sign of rain,
they say, in St. Louis, still Mississippian
in the way it lines the city up with a line of water.

the way heat rises.
Coyote scampers across the road
a few miles before El Dorado, plain as day.

Edges sharpen as the way
leads to where these same hills
are Osage. When I stop, wind sighs.

What remains of the fog has lifted.
I can see how easy it would be
to get turned around

in that soft light when
it gets to blazing and take
a lifetime finding a way out of it.

First thing: Chicago,
two mallard ducks
two houses down
roost on a chimney
to keep warm,

surprised by the sudden
turn to cold everyone
expects in March after
a taste of May
they came
to take for granted
after three days running.

Now they make themselves
big, waiting winter
out again.

2

Then, I walk the river
in Rock Island hoping
to see eagles, but I see
nothing where they are not
now but some dark wading bird watching.

Walking on the metal footbridge
over the river, Zhuangzi comes to mind.
I try to walk without putting my foot down,
leave no footprints while
joggers make themselves
big with echoes
after they are long gone nowhere
to be seen.

I stop, look
up the river
to where it begins.
though the beginning
is as it always is
out of sight,
and there are three
dark wading birds on
long thin legs watching, as am I.

I will try in the light of this new revelation
to avoid trinities of good or repeat them breathless
with passion to remove every trace of a comma,
leave no suspicion of a full stop where
there should, without a doubt, be
a sabbath, emphatic, passing,
before the next let there be.

as long as I can remember
death has always come
in time

inexplicable
in a moment in
the middle of things

like those crows
gnawing on something
snow exposed when winter
changed its mind about February

like the sister
who never writes
poetry, always prose

postcards promising more
so much more to tell when she gets home

death backs into history like the rest of us,
out of step, knowing nothing
happens twice.

timing is everything.
just wait. there will be laughter

There are circles
that sew truths
any one of us
might have found
inconceivable. No use

waiting for a guided tour
in new terrain. You are
drawn by circles of conversation.

[This was originally posted in 2007, on the occasion of Richard Rorty's death.]

The Brownian motion of a mass of children
you might mistake for random dancing
cold beside a line of still

buses waiting on the first day of December.

2

A woman counting out loud to a known number
I do not know until she comes to it

and the children flow before the buses go
to some place I know as nothing more than
away from here.

3

A dog more Chihuahua than not
wears a bronze bell I carried home from Lhasa
that rings a prayer every morning walk. He is
the incarnation of a young Lama for whom

the one hundred and eighth clear tone signifies
desire to hear one more, and he
knows he is and will be

born again.

4

Red berries glance through a window
bright in morning sun, wait for snow.

Lobelia blue on green leaves gray now fades slow.

glad of the sea
glad of the earth
glad of the sun
glad of the moon
glad of the stars
glad one by one

god said of every one
that this is good this
gladness is
good

and had god thought
god would have said right
then and there that god is good as well

and god could not say
enough of four realms of four
elements seven realms of seven planets

god could not stop and take it in
take it in take it all in
taking it in

god said angels like words
beyond numbers to express them
and still god could not stop and take it in

the elephant the whale behemoth and leviathan
planets and suns and stars and angels
beyond counting and god

could not stop and take it in
so god made us of it all
and vanished in the
whole host of it

god could not stop
to take it in god could not
contain himself and all god said

is good
it is very good