If all you counted were tires on the cars left in driveways and stranded beside the roads.

Melted dashboards and tail lights, oil pans, window glass, seat belt clasps.

The propane tanks in everyone's yards, though we didn't hear them explode.

R-13 insulation. Paint, inside and out. The liquor store's plastic letters in puddled

colors below their charred sign. Each man-made sole of every shoe in all those closets.

The laundromat's washers' round metal doors.

But then Arco, Safeway, Walgreens, the library—everything they contained.

How many miles of electrical wire and PVC pipe swirling into the once-blue sky:

how many linoleum acres? Not to mention the valley oaks, the ponderosas, all the wild

hearts and all the tame, their bark and leaves and hooves and hair and bones, their final

cries, and our neighbors: so many particular, precious, irreplaceable lives that despite

ourselves we're inhaling.

All in green went my love riding 
on a great horse of gold 
into the silver dawn.

four lean hounds crouched low and smiling 
the merry deer ran before. 

Fleeter be they than dappled dreams 
the swift sweet deer 
the red rare deer. 

Four red roebuck at a white water 
the cruel bugle sang before. 

Horn at hip went my love riding 
riding the echo down 
into the silver dawn. 

four lean hounds crouched low and smiling 
the level meadows ran before. 

Softer be they than slippered sleep 
the lean lithe deer 
the fleet flown deer. 

Four fleet does at a gold valley 
the famished arrow sang before. 

Bow at belt went my love riding 
riding the mountain down 
into the silver dawn. 

four lean hounds crouched low and smiling 
the sheer peaks ran before. 

Paler be they than daunting death 
the sleek slim deer 
the tall tense deer. 

Four tall stags at a green mountain 
the lucky hunter sang before. 

All in green went my love riding 
on a great horse of gold 
into the silver dawn. 

four lean hounds crouched low and smiling 
my heart fell dead before.

I looked and saw a sea
                               roofed over with rainbows,
In the midst of each
                               two lovers met and departed;
Then the sky was full of faces
                               with gold glories behind them.

You came in out of the night
And there were flowers in your hands,
Now you will come out of a confusion of people,
Out of a turmoil of speech about you.

I who have seen you amid the primal things
Was angry when they spoke your name
In ordinary places.
I would that the cool waves might flow over my mind,
And that the world should dry as a dead leaf,
Or as a dandelion seed-pod and be swept away,
So that I might find you again,
Alone.
 

I went to the worst of bars
hoping to get
killed.
but all I could do was to
get drunk
again.
worse, the bar patrons even
ended up
liking me.
there I was trying to get
pushed over the dark
edge
and I ended up with
free drinks
while somewhere else
some poor
son-of-a-bitch was in a hospital
bed,
tubes sticking out  all over
him
as he fought like hell
to live.
nobody would help me
die as
the drinks kept
coming,
as the next day
waited for me
with its steel clamps,
its stinking
anonymity,
its incogitant
attitude.
death doesn't always
come running
when you call
it,
not even if you
call it
from a shining
castle
or from an ocean liner
or from the best bar
on earth (or the
worst).
such impertinence
only makes the gods
hesitate and
delay.
ask me: I'm
72.

Maybe a bit dramatic, but I light

candles with my breakfast, wear a white gown 

around the house like a virgin. Right

or wrong, forgive me? No one in this town 

knows forgiveness. Miles from the limits

if I squint, there’s Orion. If heaven

exists I will be there in a minute

to hop the pearly gates, a ghost felon,

to find him. Of blood, of mud, of wise men. 

But who am I now after all these years 

without him: boy widow barbarian

trapping hornets in my shit grin. He’ll fear 

who I’ve been since. He’ll see I’m a liar,

a cheater, a whole garden on fire.

I will think of water-lilies

Growing in a darkened pool,

And my breath shall move like water,

And my hands be limp and cool.

It shall be as though I waited

In a wooden place alone;

I will learn the peace of lilies

And will take it for my own.

If a twinge of thought, if yearning

Come like wind into this place,

I will bear it like the shadow

Of a leaf across my face.

And was it I that hoped to rattle

    A broken lance against iron laws?

Was it I that asked to go down in battle

    For a lost cause?

Fool! Must there be new deaths to cry for

    When only rottenness survives?

Here are enough lost causes to die for

    Through twenty lives.

What have we learned? That the familiar

    Lusts are the only things that endure;

That for an age grown blinder and sillier,

    There is no cure.

And man? Free of one kind of fetter,

    He runs to gaudier shackles and brands;

Deserving, for all his groans, no better

    Than he demands.

The flat routine of bed and barter,

    Birth and burial, holds the lot …

Was it I that dreamed of being a martyr?

    How—and for what?

Yet, while this unconcern runs stronger

    As life shrugs on without meaning or shape,

Let me know flame and the teeth of hunger;

    Storm—not escape.

Sometimes what you need is a road

house, blast of laughter and warm air pouring

out the door, where the waitresses know

your name but the customers don't, shrill

on the third martini or fifth Blue Ribbon,

steaks searing on a huge propane-fired grill.

Two birthday parties in full swing—

mylar balloons leashed to a chair-back slowly

turning—tonight you're a few years shy

the median age, at your back-wall table drinking

iced tea because you don't spend time with

the person you turn into after a frosted glass:

chardonnay, dark rum & tonic, you remember

her well, that girl, that woman, with great

compassion: her loneliness behind the amber

liquid disappeared, or seemed to, she got funny

and affectionate, softer, sexually daring but

not a femme fatale, always more honey

than darling, her courage long-gone by morning,

that terrible waking into a stranger's sheets.

You don't miss any of it. Headaches, longing

that's miles easier to bear when sober,

wishing a friend would come along and love you,

even though you're just getting older.

Some nights you need a road house, boisterous

laughter and warm air pouring through open

doors, the kind of place where your choice

is simple: well-done, bloody, or medium rare,

and no one gives a shit that you're by yourself,

writing in a notebook. Nobody turns to stare.