A Thousand Mornings Read online

  A THOUSAND MORNINGS

  All night my heart makes its way however it can over the rough ground of uncertainties, but only until night meets and then is overwhelmed by morning, the light deepening, the wind easing and just waiting, as I too wait (and when have I ever been disappointed?) for redbird to sing.

  AN OLD STORY

  Sleep comes its little while. Then I wake

  in the valley of midnight or three a.m.

  to the first fragrances of spring

  which is coming, all by itself, no matter what.

  My heart says, what you thought you have you do not have.

  My body says, will this pounding ever stop?

  My heart says: there, there, be a good student.

  My body says: let me up and out, I want to fondle

  those soft white flowers, open in the night.

  HUM, HUM

  1.

  One summer afternoon I heard

  a looming, mysterious hum

  high in the air; then came something

  like a small planet flying past—

  something

  not at all interested in me but on its own

  way somewhere, all anointed with excitement:

  bees, swarming,

  not to be held back.

  Nothing could hold them back.

  2.

  Gannets diving.

  Black snake wrapped in a tree, our eyes

  meeting.

  The grass singing

  as it sipped up the summer rain.

  The owl in the darkness, that good darkness

  under the stars.

  The child that was myself, that kept running away

  to the also running creek,

  to colt’s foot and trilliams,

  to the effortless prattle of the birds.

  3. SAID THE MOTHER

  You are going to grow up

  and in order for that to happen

  I am going to have to grow old

  and then I will die, and the blame

  will be yours.

  4. OF THE FATHER

  He wanted a body

  so he took mine.

  Some wounds never vanish.

  Yet little by little

  I learned to love my life.

  Though sometimes I had to run hard—

  especially from melancholy—

  not to be held back.

  5.

  I think there ought to be

  a little music here:

  hum, hum.

  6.

  The resurrection of the morning.

  The mystery of the night.

  The hummingbird’s wings.

  The excitement of thunder.

  The rainbow in the waterfall.

  Wild mustard, that rough blaze of the fields.

  The mockingbird, replaying the songs of his

  neighbors.

  The bluebird with its unambitious warble

  simple yet sufficient.

  The shining fish. The beak of the crow.

  The new colt who came to me and leaned

  against the fence

  that I might put my hands upon his warm body

  and know no fear.

  Also the words of poets

  a hundred or hundreds of years dead—

  their words that would not be held back.

  7.

  Oh the house of denial has thick walls

  and very small windows

  and whoever lives there, little by little,

  will turn to stone.

  In those years I did everything I could do

  and I did it in the dark—

  I mean, without understanding.

  I ran away.

  I ran away again.

  Then, again, I ran away.

  They were awfully little, those bees,

  and maybe frightened,

  yet unstoppably they flew on, somewhere,

  to live their life.

  Hum, hum, hum.

  I HAVE DECIDED

  I have decided to find myself a home in the mountains, somewhere high up where one learns to live peacefully in the cold and the silence. It’s said that in such a place certain revelations may be discovered. That what the spirit reaches for may be eventually felt, if not exactly understood. Slowly, no doubt. I’m not talking about a vacation.

  Of course at the same time I mean to stay exactly where I am.

  Are you following me?

  WAS IT NECESSARY TO DO IT?

  I tell you that ant is very alive!

  Look at how he fusses at being stepped on.

  GREEN, GREEN IS MY SISTER’S HOUSE

  Don’t you dare climb that tree

  or even try, they said, or you will be

  sent away to the hospital of the

  very foolish, if not the other one.

  And I suppose, considering my age,

  it was fair advice.

  But the tree is a sister to me, she

  lives alone in a green cottage

  high in the air and I know what

  would happen, she’d clap her green hands,

  she’d shake her green hair, she’d

  welcome me. Truly

  I try to be good but sometimes

  a person just has to break out and

  act like the wild and springy thing

  one used to be. It’s impossible not

  to remember wild and want it back. So

  if someday you can’t find me you might

  look into that tree or—of course

  it’s possible—under it.

  THE INSTANT

  Today

  one small snake lay, looped and

  solitary

  in the high grass, it

  swirled to look, didn’t

  like what it saw

  and was gone

  in two pulses

  forward and with no sound at all, only

  two taps, in disarray, from

  that other shy one,

  my heart.

  THE WAY OF THE WORLD

  The chickens ate all the crickets.

  The foxes ate all the chickens.

  This morning a friend hauled his

  boat to shore and gave me the most

  wondrous fish. In its silver scales

  it seemed dressed for a wedding.

  The gills were pulsing, just above

  where shoulders would be, if it had

  had shoulders. The eyes were still

  looking around, I don’t know what

  they were thinking.

  The chickens ate all the crickets.

  The foxes ate all the chickens.

  I ate the fish.

  EXTENDING THE AIRPORT RUNWAY

  The good citizens of the commission

  cast their votes

  for more of everything.

  Very early in the morning

  I go out

  to the pale dunes, to look over

  the empty spaces

  of the wilderness.

  For something is there,

  something is there when nothing is there but itself,

  that is not there when anything else is.

  Alas,

  the good citizens of the commission

  have never seen it,

  whatever it is,

  formless, yet palpable.

  Very shining, very delicate.

  Very rare.

  TIDES
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br />   Every day the sea

  blue gray green lavender

  pulls away leaving the harbor’s

  dark-cobbled undercoat

  slick and rutted and worm-riddled, the gulls

  walk there among old whalebones, the white

  spines of fish blink from the strandy stew

  as the hours tick over; and then

  far out the faint, sheer

  line turns, rustling over the slack,

  the outer bars, over the green-furred flats, over

  the clam beds, slippery logs,

  barnacle-studded stones, dragging

  the shining sheets forward, deepening,

  pushing, wreathing together

  wave and seaweed, their piled curvatures

  spilling over themselves, lapping

  blue gray green lavender, never

  resting, not ever but fashioning shore,

  continent, everything.

  And here you may find me

  on almost any morning

  walking along the shore so

  light-footed so casual.

  OUT OF THE STUMP ROT, SOMETHING

  Out of the stump rot

  something

  glides forward

  that is not a rope,

  unless a rope has eyes,

  lips,

  tongue like a smack of smoke,

  body without shoulders.

  Thus: the black snake

  floating

  over the leaves

  of the old year

  and down to the pond,

  to the green just beginning

  to fuzzle out of the earth,

  also, like smoke.

  If you like a prettiness,

  don’t come here.

  Look at pictures instead,

  or wait for the daffodils.

  This is spring,

  by the rattled pond, in the shambled woods,

  as spring has always been

  and always will be

  no matter what we do

  in the suburbs.

  The matted fur,

  the red blood,

  the bats unshuttering

  their terrible faces,

  and black snake

  gliding across the field

  you think you own.

  Long neck, long tail.

  Tongue on fire.

  Heart of stone.

  IN OUR WOODS, SOMETIMES A RARE MUSIC

  Every spring

  I hear the thrush singing

  in the glowing woods

  he is only passing through.

  His voice is deep,

  then he lifts it until it seems

  to fall from the sky.

  I am thrilled.

  I am grateful.

  Then, by the end of morning,

  he’s gone, nothing but silence

  out of the tree

  where he rested for a night.

  And this I find acceptable.

  Not enough is a poor life.

  But too much is, well, too much.

  Imagine Verdi or Mahler

  every day, all day.

  It would exhaust anyone.

  THE MORNING PAPER

  Read one newspaper daily (the morning edition

  is the best

  for by evening you know that you at least

  have lived through another day)

  and let the disasters, the unbelievable

  yet approved decisions,

  soak in.

  I don’t need to name the countries,

  ours among them.

  What keeps us from falling down, our faces

  to the ground; ashamed, ashamed?

  THE POET COMPARES HUMAN NATURE

  TO THE OCEAN FROM WHICH WE CAME

  The sea can do craziness, it can do smooth,

  it can lie down like silk breathing

  or toss havoc shoreward; it can give

  gifts or withhold all; it can rise, ebb, froth

  like an incoming frenzy of fountains, or it can

  sweet-talk entirely. As I can too,

  and so, no doubt, can you, and you.

  ON TRAVELING TO BEAUTIFUL PLACES

  Every day I’m still looking for God

  and I’m still finding him everywhere,

  in the dust, in the flowerbeds.

  Certainly in the oceans,

  in the islands that lay in the distance

  continents of ice, countries of sand

  each with its own set of creatures

  and God, by whatever name.

  How perfect to be aboard a ship with

  maybe a hundred years still in my pocket.

  But it’s late, for all of us,

  and in truth the only ship there is

  is the ship we are all on

  burning the world as we go.

  THE MAN WHO HAS MANY ANSWERS

  The man who has many answers

  is often found

  in the theaters of information

  where he offers, graciously,

  his deep findings.

  While the man who has only questions,

  to comfort himself, makes music.

  LIFE STORY

  When I lived under the black oaks

  I felt I was made of leaves.

  When I lived by Little Sister Pond,

  I dreamed I was the feather of the blue heron

  left on the shore;

  I was the pond lily, my root delicate as an artery,

  my face like a star,

  my happiness brimming.

  Later I was the footsteps that follow the sea.

  I knew the tides, I knew the ingredients of the wrack.

  I knew the eider, the red-throated loon

  with his uplifted beak and his smart eye.

  I felt I was the tip of the wave,

  the pearl of water on the eider’s glossy back.

  No, there’s no escaping, nor would I want to escape

  this outgo, this foot-loosening, this solution

  to gravity and a single shape.

  Now I am here, later I will be there.

  I will be that small cloud, staring down at the water,

  the one that stalls, that lifts its white legs, that

  looks like a lamb.

  “FOR I WILL CONSIDER MY DOG PERCY”

  For I will consider my dog Percy.

  For he was made small but brave of heart.

  For if he met another dog he would kiss her in kindness.

  For when he slept he snored only a little.

  For he could be silly and noble in the same moment.

  For when he spoke he remembered the trumpet and when

  he scratched he struck the floor like a drum.

  For he ate only the finest food and drank only the

  purest of water, yet would nibble of dead fish also.

  For he came to me impaired and therefore certain of

  short life, yet thoroughly rejoiced in each day.

  For he took his medicines without argument.

  For he played easily with the neighborhood’s Bull

  Mastiff.

  For when he came upon mud he splashed through it.

  For he was an instrument for the children to learn

  benevolence upon.

  For he listened to poems as well as love-talk.

  For when he sniffed it was as if he were being

/>   pleased by every part of the world.

  For when he sickened he rallied as many times as

  he could.

  For he was a mixture of gravity and waggery.

  For we humans can seek self-destruction in ways

  he never dreamed of.

  For he took actions both cunning and reckless, yet

  refused always to offer himself to be admonished.

  For his sadness though without words was

  understandable.

  For there was nothing sweeter than his peace

  when at rest.

  For there was nothing brisker than his life when

  in motion.

  For he was of the tribe of Wolf.

  For when I went away he would watch for me at

  the window.

  For he loved me.

  For he suffered before I found him, and never

  forgot it.

  For he loved Anne.

  For when he lay down to enter sleep he did not argue

  about whether or not God made him.

  For he could fling himself upside down and laugh

  a true laugh.

  For he loved his friend Ricky.

  For he would dig holes in the sand and then let

  Ricky lie in them.

  For often I see his shape in the clouds and this is

  a continual blessing.

  VARANASI

  Early in the morning we crossed the ghat,

  where fires were still smoldering,

  and gazed, with our Western minds, into the Ganges.

  A woman was standing in the river up to her waist;

  she was lifting handfuls of water and spilling it

  over her body, slowly and many times,

  as if until there came some moment

  of inner satisfaction between her own life and the river’s.

  Then she dipped a vessel she had brought with her

  and carried it filled with water back across the ghat,

  no doubt to refresh some shrine near where she lives,

  for this is the holy city of Shiva, maker

  of the world, and this is his river.