for the dark work
    that was yours,
        which wasn’t to be done easily or quickly,
            but thoroughly—

and indeed by time summer
    opened its green harbors
        the field was nothing but flowers, flowers, flowers,
            from shore to shore

Li Po and the Moon

There is the story of the old Chinese poet:
at night in his boat he went drinking and dreaming
    and singing

then drowned as he reached for the moon’s reflection.
Well, probably each of us, at some time, has been
    as desperate.

Not the moon, though.

Thinking of Swirler

One day I went out
    into a wonderful
        ongoing afternoon,
            it was fall,

the pine trees were brushing themselves
    against the sky
        as though they were painting it,
            and Swirler,

who was alive then,
    was walking slowly
        through the green bog,
            his neck

as thick as an ox,
    his antlers
        brushing against the trees,
            his three good feet tapping

the softness beneath him
    and the fourth, from an old wound,
        swirling.
            I know he saw me

for he gave me a long look
    which was as precious as a few
        good words,
            since his eyes

were without terror.
    What do the creatures know?
        What in this world can we be certain about?
            How did he know I was nothing

but a harmless mumbler of words,
    some of which would be about him
        and this wind-whipped day?
            In a week he would be dead,

arrowed down by a young man I like,
    though with some difficulty.
        In my house there are a hundred half-done poems.
            Each of us leaves an unfinished life.

Snowy Egret

A late summer night and the snowy egret
has come again to the shallows in front of my house

as he has for forty years.
Don’t think he is a casual part of my life,

that white stroke in the dark.

Violets

Down by the rumbling creek and the tall trees—
    where I went truant from school three days a week
        and therefore broke the record—
there were violets as easy in their lives
    as anything you have ever seen
        or leaned down to intake the sweet breath of.
Later, when the necessary houses were built
    they were gone, and who would give significance
        to their absence.
Oh, violets, you did signify, and what shall take
    your place?

Then Bluebird Sang

Bluebird
    slipped a little tremble
        out of the triangle
            of his mouth

and it hung in the air
    until it reached my ear
        like a froth or a frill
            that Schumann

might have written in a dream.
    Dear morning
        you come
            with so many angels of mercy

so wondrously disguised
    in feathers, in leaves,
        in the tongues of stones,
            in the restless waters,

in the creep and the click
    and the rustle
        that greet me wherever I go
            with their joyful cry: I’m still here, alive!

We Shake with Joy