the way a burlap sack is full of stones or sand.

We say, “Hand me the sack,”

but we get the weight.

Heavier if left out in the rain.

To think that the sand or stones are the self is an error.

To think that grief is the self is an error.

Self carries grief as a pack mule carries the side bags,

being careful between the trees to leave extra room.

The mule is not the load of ropes and nails and axes.

The self is not the miner nor builder nor driver.

What would it be to take the bride

and leave behind the heavy dowry?

To let the thin-ribbed mule browse in tall grasses,

its long ears waggling like the tails of two happy dogs?

THE MONK STOOD BESIDE A WHEELBARROW

The monk stood beside a wheelbarrow, weeping.

God or Buddha nowhere to be seen—

these tears were fully human,

bitter, broken,

falling onto the wheelbarrow’s rusty side.

They gathered at its bottom,

where the metal drank them in to make more rust.

You cannot know what you do in this life, what you have done.

The monk stood weeping.

I knew I also had a place on this hard earth.

I WRITE THESE WORDS TO DELAY

What can I do with these thoughts,

given me as a dog is given her flock?

Or perhaps it is the reverse—

my life the unruly sheep, being herded.

At night,

all lie down on the mountain grasses,

while mirror sheep, a mirror guard-dog

follow one another through rock outcrops,

across narrow streams. They drink and graze by starlight.

This morning, waking to unaccustomed calmness,

I write these words to stay in that silent, unfevered existence,

to delay the other words that are waiting.

SEVENTEEN PEBBLES

After Degas

The woman who will soon

take a lover shaves her legs in the bath,

considering:

Would knowing or not knowing she does this please him more?

Ecstasy: Czechoslovakia, 1933

The actress was only seventeen,

and so the director arranged

to have her pricked lightly with pins

at the needed moments.

The Complaint

“I do not like his most recent book,”

one master said of another.

“It compels weeping.”

Character and Life

The young novelist held underwater

the head of the character in his book he loved best.

In the book, and as he wrote,

he counted until he was sure it was finished.

Maple

The lake scarlets

the same instant as the maple.

Let others try to say this is not passion.

The Story

“Do you ever _____,” my weeping friend asked.

I lied and said yes and invented a story,

a fate I would now have also to live through,

because like a bride I had promised myself to its hands.

Lighthouse

Its vision sweeps its one path

like an aged monk raking a garden,

his question long ago answered or moved on.

Far off, night-grazing horses,

breath scented with oat grass and fennel,

step through it, disappear, step through it, disappear.