stinks of summer must and disrepair,

if the worn steps rising to the altar

lead nowhere but to stone, this, too, could be

the revelation—but of a destiny

fixed as the graceless frescoes on the wall—

the grim and superannuated gods

who rule this shadow-land of marble tombs,

bathed in its green suboceanic light.

Not a vision to pursue, and yet

these insufficiencies make up the world.

Strange how most journeys come to this: the sun

bright on the unfamiliar hills, new vistas

dazzling the eye, the stubborn heart unchanged.

WAITING IN THE AIRPORT

On the same journey each of them

Is going somewhere else. A goose-necked

Woman in a flowered dress

Stares gravely at two businessmen.

They turn away but carry on

Their argument on real estate.

Lost in a mist of aftershave,

A salesman in a brown toupée

Is scribbling on his Racing Form

While a fat man stares down at his hands

As if there should be something there.

The soldiers stand in line for sex—

With wives or girlfriends, whoever

They hope is waiting for them at

The other end. The wrapped perfume,

The bright, stuffed animals they clutch

Tremble under so much heat.

Lives have been pulled cross-continent.

So much will soon be going on

But somewhere else—divorces, birthdays,

Deaths and million-dollar deals.

But nothing ever happens here,

This terminal that narrows to

A single unattended gate,

One entrance to so many worlds.

MEN AFTER WORK

Done with work, they are sitting by themselves

in coffeeshops or diners, taking up the booths,

filling every other seat along the counter,

waiting for the menu, for the water,

for the girl to come and take their order,

always on the edge of words, almost without appetite,

knowing there is nothing on the menu that they want,

waiting patiently to ask for one

more refill of their coffee, surprised

that even its bitterness will not wake them up.

Still they savor it, holding each sip

lukewarm in their mouths, this last taste of evening.

ROUGH COUNTRY

Give me a landscape made of obstacles,

of steep hills and jutting glacial rock,

where the low-running streams are quick to flood

the grassy fields and bottomlands.

A place

no engineers can master—where the roads

must twist like tendrils up the mountainside

on narrow cliffs where boulders block the way.

Where tall black trunks of lightning-scalded pine

push through the tangled woods to make a roost

for hawks and swarming crows.

And sharp inclines

where twisting through the thorn-thick underbrush,

scratched and exhausted, one turns suddenly

to find an unexpected waterfall,

not half a mile from the nearest road,

a spot so hard to reach that no one comes—

a hiding place, a shrine for dragonflies

and nesting jays, a sign that there is still

one piece of property that won’t be owned.

BECOMING A REDWOOD

Stand in a field long enough, and the sounds

start up again. The crickets, the invisible