How grass can be nourishing in the
    mouths of the lambs.
How rivers and stones are forever
    in allegiance with gravity
        while we ourselves dream of rising.
How two hands touch and the bonds will
    never be broken.
How people come, from delight or the
    scars of damage,
to the comfort of a poem.

Let me keep my distance, always, from those
    who think they have the answers.

Let me keep company always with those who say
    “Look!” and laugh in astonishment,
    and bow their heads.

Imagine

I don’t care for adjectives, yet the world
    fills me with them.
And even beyond what I see, I imagine more.

Seeing, for example, with understanding,
    or with acceptance and humility and
        without understanding,
into the heart of the bristly, locked-in worm
    just as it’s becoming what we call the luna,
        that green tissue-winged, strange, graceful,
            fluttering thing.

Will death allow such transportation of the eye?
    Will we see then into the breaking open
        of the kernel of corn,
the sprout plunging upward through damp clod
    and into the sun?

Well, we will all find out, each of us.
    And what would we be, beyond the yardstick,
beyond supper and dollars,
    if we were not filled with such wondering?

First Days in San Miguel de Allende

1.

The flagellated Christ
is being carried
to San Miguel de Allende.
He must be very heavy

yet the carriers persist
upon the sun flashed road
and the people follow

in the same way that people would seek
a river heard of but never yet found.
They are that thirsty.

2.

In the garden the jacaranda
    is dropping
        its blue festivities
            everywhere,

the wren
    is carrying sticks
        into the hollow
            behind the elbow

of the metal horse
    that stands
        in the bougainvillea
            at the edge

of the singing pool.
    I have come, for the first time, to Mexico.
        And what has happened
            to that intense ambition

with which I always wake?
    Soaked up
        in the colors, stolen
            by the bloody Christs

of the churches,
    by the children laughing
        at my meager Spanish.
            It is said

that when you rent a house here
    the owners are not responsible
        for church bells, barking dogs,
            or firecrackers.

It is early in the morning.
    Antonio is sweeping the blossoms away.
        I am feeling something, incredibly,
            like peace.

The wren is busy, my pencil idle.
    The silks of the jacaranda, as though
        it is the most important work in the world,
            keep falling.

3.

The tops of the northbound trains are dangerous.
Still, they are heaped with hopefuls.

I understand their necessity.
Understanding, however, is not sharing.

Oh, let there be a wedding of the
    mind and the heart, if not today
        then soon.

Meanwhile, let me change my own life
into something better.

Meanwhile, on the streets of San Miguel de Allende
    it is easy to smile.
“Hola,” I say to the children.
“Hi,” they say, as I pass

with my passport, and money, in my pocket.

The Trees

Do you think of them as decoration?

Think again.