now filled with water, a campsite
right by the onramp
surrounded by trailers, and in the overpass pond
roiling screaming kids with inner tubes
then field field field quiet
line of trees
then a cemetery then
field field field field field.
*
And in the winter
the snow flattens things further
a two-dimensional version
of landscape, a map of itself,
flattens everything around it
flattens even the sky.
POEM FOR THE PUTTING IN OF THE NEW CARPET
Findlay, Ohio
This day’s a green one, breezed, wet with air.
I sit by the window, wonder
if I will become kind again
once the carpet is in.
I am far from home.
I am in a house I have bought I have
come far.
*
We put up a painting we have bought,
a painting with pieces of figures taken from Courbet
and spliced to other figures
one’s part of a head that turns into
part of a hand that turns into—who knows?
*
I have painted the two desks green
the kitchen table wine rack
side tables a chair all green
the chairs around the table brown.
This is the stuff of our old families.
We have taken the stuff of our old families
and put a layer of green on.
*
How to hold
to have my house contain.
It keeps out the humidity keeps in the cool
and we will pay for it later for
all of it and our
secret togetherness, now housed,
is put down in a book
and calculated and summed
and the average part is
I have become cold.
Meantime the sky
is heavy without girth
like the wet air.
The sky is a blue roof and not.
*
When the sky is daytime blue
it is a curtain
drawn up over the stars.
At night, the curtain opens
to a flat map of the universe,
the near and far side by side,
one single surface.
*
They are putting the carpet in
right now as we speak
and up will go the green desks
and up papers and books
I will become kind or
I was never not kind
or I am what I always was.
*
Can I have your hand?
Can you put your hand on the top
of my head like a cover
and can you turn it on my hair?
*
Rooms become smaller
with new trim paint and nothing but scrapwood flooring.
It’s an optical illusion—I was never blue.
Can’t count on a house
and the calculations are already such that
I am green. Let’s start again. Again.
Put it in, the carpet,
I need a bottom so as to catch me.
OHIO
This day has a quietness
that sticks. The writing
makes a noise like sheets,
then a quietness.
Yesterday, a sky I could
live with. Day before, wind.
I pushed the side of my car
up against the great nothingness
of air, and it pushed back.
Yesterday the sky had height,
the clouds were measurable
and various. Dark and light.
The blue between the clouds was blue.
SHOWER WATER
stood in the shower today
let water drip off my lids
it wasn’t crying
it was shower water
the top of my eyelids
if I moved back more water
if I moved forward less
Port
BOAT TOUR
You will see to your left the new port
you will see to your right the old,
l’obelisque, to the left the clocktower,
only remaining piece of—
bombed by the Germans when they left,
now a great distribution center for fruit
all the way from Africa,
and the gulls on the roof scare
all at once, middle of the night,
all up in the air and yelling
their human yells, the fruit,
the stars, the war memorials in
three different languages,
bombed par Allemandes in 1944,
the waves are slight, very slight,
the water molecules, I am told,
stay in the same vertical trajectory
though they appear almost to be moving forward.
FIELDGUIDE
is it a red one it is
desert paintbrush it is skyrocket
is it a pink a purple
shooting star is it a wild rose
primrose a morning glory
is it growing on top of a cactus
so prickly pear is it cold
out still glacier lily
can you blow the petals poppy, orange
desert dandelion blown white
it is a weed nonnative pull it
it is this or it is that one
I saw a purple bell upside down
the width of two fingers
I’ve never seen anything
like that way out here
FIELDGUIDE MARGINALIA
Flax
is not yellow as I thought
but purple blue, thin skinned
as poppies—Sue
has got a thick patch
posing for photographs
with whole mountains
Dandelions, late-stage
here there are bones—
Addie has a bone she found
growing as if from the ground—
and greens and honeybees and
the dandelions have overblown
but there’s always another thing to be,
the puff of white seed only an early
stage of yellow
Valley lily
sweet bells, dress frilled
faced groundward like a little girl,
a picture book: a fairy in each
the bell is her dress part
wait till night only
the sweet
smell will
put you to sleep
take it for a nightcap, even
Radiotower violet
electric blue, blue electric purple
stacked as with signal
the whole meadow covered
all parts connected
Glacier lily
thin, but built for ice
meadow yellow
thin, thin stalked, then the field
turned to shooting stars,
not red like Sue said
but purple-pink, clumped
head first for the ground
petals back, a diver underwater
head first, a whole meadow wide
and the wind blows intermittent
grasses into brushed sea
this rapids, this blown grass
THREE POEMS CALLED “THE BASIL”
The basil
The basil wilted
clear to the side of the pot
and I gave it some water
and it’s back now
I’ve quit my Ohio job I’m
better than ever
The basil
It is amazing the basil
how the water was sucked dry
its wilt and fall
how it took to the new water
and how back to normal
The basil
The basil is big
I trimmed it back to make it bigger
each break a double growth
each stalk tipping with
its own weight
I cannot write about my dead dog
he is dead
the basil I can write is big and alive
KEEPING TRACK
five birds on the wooden beam
black and shaking their luck
no six I missed one
it was there anyway
PROOF
Sue has put bird houses
in big colors
on top of posts
and if god, god has put a sky here
for a roof
and if red,
red has made itself a wagon for dirt
and if dirt, the tree has
planted itself in ingenuity
also the sage
as Sue has planted
a whole small garden plot
PHOTOGRAPH OF A FRIEND TAKEN AFTER HE HAS DISAPPEARED
I take a photograph.
A telephone wire, a pole.
Nothing to see.
I write: I can picture you here.
I write: Walk out of the woods, Craig.
I write: Those woods, there.
