The water is one thing, and one thing for miles.
The water is one thing, making this bridge
Built over the water another. Walk it
Early, walk it back when the day goes dim, everyone
Rising just to find a way toward rest again.
We work, start on one side of the day
Like a planet’s only sun, our eyes straight
Until the flame sinks. The flame sinks. Thank God
I’m different. I’ve figured and counted. I’m not crossing
To cross back. I’m set
On something vast. It reaches
Long as the sea. I’m more than a conqueror, bigger
Than bravery. I don’t march. I’m the one who leaps.

so much depends

upon

a red wheel

barrow

glazed with rain

water

beside the white

chickens

 

Only today did I notice the abyss

in abysmal and only because my mind

was generating rhymes for dismal,

and it made of the two a pair,

to which much later it joined

baptismal, as—I think—a joke.

I decided to do nothing with

the rhymes, treating them as one does

the unfortunately frequent appearance

of the “crafts” adults require children

to fashion from pipe cleaners

and plastic beads. One is not permitted

to simply throw them away,

but can designate a drawer

that serves as a kind of trash can

never emptied. I suppose one day

it will be full, and then I will know

it is time to set my child free.

The difficulty is my mind leaks

and so it will never fill, despite

the clumps of language I drop in,

and this means my mind can never

be abandoned in the woods

with a kiss and a wave

and a little red kerchief

tied under its chin.

Today we walked the inlet Nybøl Nor
     remembering how to tread on frozen snow.
          Ate cold sloeberries

that tasted of wind—a white pucker—
     spat their sour pits in snow. Along
          the horizon, a line of windmills dissolved

into a white field. Your voice
     on the phone, a gesund auf dein keppele
          you blessed my head. Six months now

since I've seen you. There are
     traces of you here, your curls still dark
          and long, your woven dove,

the room you stayed in: send your syllables,
     I am swimming below the tidemark.
          Words shed overcoats, come

to me undressed, slender-limbed, they have no
     letters yet. It is the festival
          of lights, I have no

candles. I light one for each night,
     pray on a row
          of nine lighthouses.

^{(after Stephen Hawking)}

Do you sometimes want to wake up to the singularity

we once were?

so compact nobody

needed a bed, or food or money—

nobody hiding in the school bathroom

or home alone

pulling open the drawer

where the pills are kept.

For every atom belonging to me as good

Belongs to you.   Remember?

There was no   Nature.    No

 them.   No tests

to determine if the elephant

grieves her calf    or if

the coral reef feels pain.    Trashed

oceans don’t speak English or Farsi or French;

would that we could wake up   to what we were

—when we were ocean    and before that

to when sky was earth, and animal was energy, and rock was

liquid and stars were space and space was not

at all—nothing

before we came to believe humans were so important

before this awful loneliness.

Can molecules recall it?

what once was?    before anything happened?

No I, no We, no one. No was

No verb      no noun

only a tiny tiny dot brimming with

is is is is is

All   everything   home