from Little Million Doors: An Elegy for My Father
Long days of rain a phone was ringing High over the steppes the wet
Gables of the world immortal it was
Our souls streaming into quiets
Of woodgrain toward what
Plane of convergence for years I could not
Answer a music in pain the undying
Will undying in the dying grass
~
My skin felt heavy I left it Draped Over a chair to walk out Across the wet Colors of may I could See time glow I could See the ancestors Of trees let me Ask you this
~
And the road was all of My bones All and only I Was on it Walking to where at noon forever My voice Far and thinly Filling up The canyons the boxes Of its meanings I say was What I mean is Will be
~
I was carrying my blood to a
Height above the city
And dropping
It but nothing like a shout
Fell from me a
Whole just then
Into shining
~
A single light
Death it could be asked
Innumerable
Shadows inside me
Whatever
The opposite of lightning
Hangs
Unbearably above the barley field
~
What is it to live Is to want to live
A pearl translucent what
The rivers are burning
Air in curtains is everywhere
Burning the fields of phlox
And spaces
Of office and morgue snow
What lights
The rooftops the rooftops
I am looking but there is no
Me to do the looking
Between branches between bars In prisons I was framed By doors the dark Of the body I was no one And the whole sea
~
And a man is there follows
Me
Through woods every age but this
Is no woods ahead on the road
The hands
Flutter
Windows whole rooms of his body
In doorways his voice in
The crossing who my
Son in cedars is he
Me from the bell note
This thunder under
Granite understands us
~
I was quickling
Through archways
Over grainfloors and water the arches were only
My body the wet
Steps of libraries
Room after room the fountains
Like a page of air I was
Looking for an end
In the book of everything
In shafts
The mines in salt
Marshes a turtle’s
Wet roof in
Reeds and mud and watching
Thistle release its down
And hold and release
Were one word in the small I was
Futuring the thistle to twelve
Distances of
God what is this between us a world
~
And this must be what love
Feels like this
Spreading out over
Surfaces
Of leaves
As they flicker out
The children they are all
Children now their hands
On the drums the borders and
Bread is and is
This the gift