Last week I met the so-called deranged man
who lives in the woods. He was walking with
great care, so as not to step on any small,
living thing.

For myself, I have walked in these woods for
more than forty years, and I am the only
thing, it seems, that is about to be used up.
Or, to be less extravagant, will, in the
foreseeable future, be used up.

First, though, I want to step out into some
fresh morning and look around and hear myself
crying out: “The house of money is falling!
The house of money is falling! The weeds are
rising! The weeds are rising!”

I Am Standing

I am standing
on the dunes
in the heat of summer
and I am listening

to mockingbird again
who is tonguing
his embellishments
and, in the distance,

the shy
weed loving sparrow
who has but one
soft song

which he sings
again and again
and something
somewhere inside

my own unmusical self
begins humming:
thanks for the beauty of the world.
Thanks for my life.

Schubert

He takes such small steps
to express our longings.
Thank you, Schubert.

How many hours
do I sit here
aching to do

what I do not do
when, suddenly,
he throws a single note

higher than the others
so that I feel
the green field of hope,

and then, descending,
all this world’s sorrow,
so deadly, so beautiful.

Moon and Water

I wake and spend
the last hours
of darkness
with no one

but the moon.
She listens
to my complaints
like the good

companion she is
and comforts me surely
with her light.
But she, like everyone,

has her own life.
So finally I understand
that she has turned away,
is no longer listening.

She wants me
to refold myself
into my own life.
And, bending close,

as we all dream of doing,
she rows with her white arms
through the dark water
which she adores.

When I Was Young and Poor

When I was young and poor,
when little was much,
when I was nimble and never tired,
and the hours of the day were deep and long,
where was the end that was already committed?
Where was the flesh that thinned and stiffened?
Nowhere, nowhere!
Just the gift of forgetfulness gracious and kind
while I ran up hills and drank the wind—
time out of mind.

At the River Clarion

1.

I don’t know who God is exactly.
But I’ll tell you this.
I was sitting in the river named Clarion, on a
    water splashed stone
and all afternoon I listened to the voices
    of the river talking.
Whenever the water struck the stone it had
    something to say,
and the water itself, and even the mosses trailing
    under the water.
And slowly, very slowly, it became clear to me
    what they were saying.
Said the river: I am part of holiness.
And I too, said the stone. And I too, whispered
    the moss beneath the water.