The spiritual histories.

Peter Paul Rubens- Jupiter and Callisto (Flemish 1611-13)

To grind is, yes, please,  to eat what has humbly fallen,
And ground in the kinks of a grinder.

These goldless histories, Dear Light, are
Spiritual histories.

And this and me and
Gold are not skin--

They are spiritual skin.

And you,
You are not who you were when I saw you.

Yes.

At the wheel,

Turning around,

To say yes.

A recycled effort.

The curse blooms in wild kisses.

Breezes dream from everywhere--

Without courtesy.

Once was an archway, or a wave dismantling the shore,

Singing, insignificantly,

"I have hurt you, my Sister, have I not."

Lake shed.

I have been asleep for so long where

Mosses drench the brush--

Their sopping residues cotton the shade lying

Beneath me as

I am upon them:

Meanwhile,

Or eternally, an orbital task is asked of circles on the lake waters

Just once, and is

Expected and expected

And stalked,

Not so

Much as many times or often,

The surface storms, but when the

Equidistance returns

And the mirror is gradually, confidently

Retroubled.

Poverty is freedom.

What in the riches of our resources

Stays us to the course

Liberates us,

When liberated of our resources.

We are free.

Knitting factory.

Desiderio da Settignano - Young Boy (Italian 1460)

For Oliver Wright.

Everyone has a shell with which to call,

So call! And everyone looks preoccupied.

Upon each sprawling earfall it causes,

the beck is thrust eagerly against

The all--

You were named, and measured lengthwise

In inches--a trout, a record-breaker, a warm stitch--

Apparently it's important,

In the execution of a maiden shawl. It is yours to crave,

Its bay of toys and anxious others from which to cast

A growing shadow

And draw--

From this, little burstling, let

Innocence invariably recede, and your impending

Goodness resolve.

Look up.

When the world opens up to beg

You buy sharp things

And you open them up to beg back.

And what you harness in the incredible fear of others you lay warmly near

The heart of love.

(Look how it barely squeezes by when it moves past what it fought to subdue.)

The fairest leagues.

It takes supreme patience--

Are the fairest leagues

Ready?

Have the random kicks of trunks been devised?

Are swimming thighs and splashing shoals--

Even if dangerous, been apprised?

Could the recreationists possibly be that wise?

Just blushing and just

Blushing

And

Sinking coldly with the purpose of drowning

Out of high school

Only to rise,

The creased gangly few

Nuisance youths who, new, know mermaids

And guessed, and wished, and

Made mesh of their ebb-

Capturing chests--

Them, I mean, those few.

On waking up.

I have exacted from Wonder

Everything I need.

And my living limits are dented

By bullhorns.

The Gods.

My eyes were traditional and young.

In the white glarings of the creek

Between smooth stones the colors of clay and

Blueberries

And bloodshed,

I grasped the coffee of the Earth.

Immobilized by the relationship of ones I

Loved and ones I tolerated,

I met my friends, who are Gods.

Tower, spring.

How safe the bell must be to ring.

Each cloud is near enough to capture that

Song.

The setting sun leaves a place,

And the moon is there. And it

Leaves a place.

Shower.

There are disciplined times

When I have nothing.

I draw your face in the steam

And press my tongue against the

Idea of where

maybe, et cetera.

Inamorata.

Life can be found in the smelting pots.

It glows in union and stimulates what it must endure. Slag.

How pitiful.

Salt.

There is a far lesser kind of wisdom dividing people--

Deeper and abandoning people and misused.

Some must forever be encouraged,

And some never.

A grain of salt is a measure of learning,

Worth no less than its

Weight in salt.

Holy color.

Tim McFarlane (recent Philadelphia)

If we follow subtle odors we will reach

Subtle rewards.

First, you could say, we will have holy color.

Holy shapes--

Teenages,

Cleft away from adult time as if meaningless

To the future.

The thrifty life.

Jean Auguste-Dominique Ingres The Head of a Girl (French 1813)

The thrifty life you have was never dreamt of in ignorance.

We all knew--you, and I, and of course they knew.

But pick away at your shoes, at the veil below them--at the blossomings of

Me and others here, seeing you.

There is only one thing dividing you from the apple.

Seance.

Every once in a while it's like a ouija board--

I have the layout in my head.

There's the table.

wonder and I want to speak up.

The chandelier rocks when the girls from the past speak--it is

As though a baby had been born and was to be cared for,

And was the spirituality of

A delicate prank. The Song goes:

"I wonder..."

In the waves.

Nobody can say, "I must," before the waves.

You are free.

This translucent ocean before you is free,

Its decisions and color,

Its frenzies of prehistory

Are free.

Your genetics and memory steep in vaults of black tea.

Tour tongue has tasted to be there,

Your arms have swam to stay afloat.

Such a reward, saline and crippling.

Inamorata.

My children, who are a part of the sun, mine embers to be yours.

Acutely known

--or unknown,

The fluted heart is felted in damp green fur--

The cat gets around.

Isn't it remarkable what slender ledges welcome this little thing,

Asking,

"What next, Dear Animal, when my hands fall to my mossy sides?"

And what is like the things one does when finally free?

They're bundled in the Earth,

So coercive when called upon.

Sleeper.

Chemicals meant to cure sick people have been

Detected, mixed in the blood of dancers--

What there in desperation seeps between the waterproofing

Cup of fingers

Clings to the gentle sleeper

In marbles of lazy sweat.

Each divoted inch of skin is a burden to the touch.

Pittsburgh.

Leave it to the ingenuity of complete strangers,

Gravely eliminating the past.

They drive while their stranger passengers throw

Tapestries from the blue windows,

Insisting, "More beautiful!"

On all they derange to pass and

All they cover...

The archways.

As do the eyes wander far,

So too does the blue breeze upon which ferries the soul.

Every archway is, however far,

Full of wishes and conditions--

Out among the gales with mottos,

Saying, "you have come here on thin things,

I could shoot them down."

Virtue.

Into the stealth crass of this heartbreak

You must go.

While you are there you must

STEAL

From the others. And when the pall asks you to regret it

USE the crass regret you stole.

What you've cobbled, creature, will recite your name...

A peripheral blur.

Distress comes and goes with

The feeling up

Up--

And foxes running by.

What the expression became.

The future backed away from us,

Wrinkling saying so, stooping

To fit the aches--

Saying, "Louder."

The ears' hammers became paperweights

While the dead pets became memorabilia of

Mid generation confusion, as each side sought

A common language to

Argue in.

The soul was common, and like a body it was

Blemished with a shadow.

"I wish you would speak up"

Became

"I wish it was your fortune at my bare feet as had never been once before."--

And

"You needn't say anything. old wall. I understand."

The luxuries.

For JW, who once rode a horse into an electric fence.

I have finally made myself happy,

Watching a bird land

On a wooden lamp.

There's a writing desk with some papers feathered across the top,

Beside

Which--and beneath its shadow,

Lies a sleeping brown dog.

I have achieved my own variable record--and the riches in

The window are all wan and hungry to me.

I need never ache to join the half-blind path of the others,

Nor to be young like before.

The invisible.

For Robert Serra.

If you trace the bird out of the tree

Its hesitation will go undetected at first.

It limps from the solids then tumbles up-

Ward.

Once a mystery is true it places the non-believers first in line.

But non-believers--it took work and money and

Belief

To accommodate you.

You have tried to worry. But seriously, don't!

There where magic gets into you

The buoyant clawling flickers,

Forward.

To each governance flies a tell to the mystery it evokes...

The 1950's.

People who once lived

Here

Staggered everywhere they went. They staggered on

Their way to privilege, and they staggered on their way to abuse it.

They staggered to be drunk for the light,

Inventing mementos like iced tea, and the notion of afternoon--

All diversionary tactics.

And maybe once in a while still and alone one said to another:

"My love must be a kind of blind love."

Very important.

Death, make a match for me.

I mistook the wallpaperer

For the architect.

And I mistook the pig

For the guest.

Stay with me while I watch you.

Less startled than I,

Still, given over to

The staff of surrenders.

I am their white flags, all their white flags.

Stay with me while I bulk in the wind and watch

You.

Central Pennsylvania.

I wish this lamp worked through the storm!

There is a boastfulness, half explored--as if sleep was an excuse!

Where do I go when I fall asleep?

And what girl did I miss, surveying the fence-posts

Across which sheep casually roam?

If I have to fall to Earth, I'd like to fall here.

When a girl wakes up you can feel it.

Her toes lift up off the sheets--

They are lighter than the snow.

Haiku for two.

See! Both landscapes owe

A little to the eyes--Blue

Among one, the boat.

Haiku of one.

A hostile witness

Learns his echo, captively.

Kept, he speaks it once.

Amber.

Can't you see the cave is dark where the search enters

And where the bodies go?

People hearing the response are the echo.

Philip Guston (American recent)

People responding are the echo

And

People hearing the response are the echo.

One part of civilization rises with the brim of love.

And

One is always catering.

Like songs.

If you doubt it, then

Rise away. The tiny calligraphies reach left to right.

The green birch in the sideways

Flux of snow

Is as real as any fairy tale--any handwritten note,

Or hummable song.

A road in the fair.

A road in the fair

Takes time to sink into

The traveler--

Into the muscle

Into the thrush of the glands.

Imagine the tranquility of the lane in

This thrushed land.

The footsteps prevail,

Outnumbered by the brawling Earth,

The Conodoguinet Creek.

I'm not gonna find it as you left it--

In incomplete February jade crystals from the grass contours

Crackling out.

Even the words will pass on by.

And when they're remembered the tongue will say

The current's name

With a nod to the origin--but all the same,

Differently.

This hole of an hour.

Attendez-vous!

The night is falling. And all that goes with it is falling.

One has to wonder in this hole of an hour

If all the things we've lost would have been

Lost,

Had we once looked up,

And measured this canopy

And its starry risks.