and the Humboldt coeds a hopeful tumble.

Two weeks later, still recovering,

I can see you give the cookpot

a slow, appraising stir,

nodding with a resignation so deep

it’s joyful,

“Venison stew again.”

Spoons scraping the wooden bowls,

we eat in front of the fireplace,

jawing about this and that:

how many gut-busting stones

we lugged for the hearth;

why the salmon are late this year;

the relative merits of Huskies and McCullochs;

the continuing decline of the novel;

why Ann left Willy back in ’88;

how on a freezing Skagit Valley morning once

we saw a flock of two hundred geese

wheel above us and turn into snow.

And the days go by like the stories and river

into whatever comfort we deserve.

We eat the stew, laughing.

And the days go by like the sun and moon,

gloriously indifferent

to us crazy old men full of lies,

gumming venison as we slowly grow

helpless and forgetful,

retelling the old stories to keep them new,

till after many meals

the wooden bowl wears through.

Winter Song

IN MEMORY OF DOROTHY MILLIMAN

The acceptance of death

Clear down in our hearts

Is the faith we bring to life

That love may go on:

The lustrous umber

Of decaying ferns;

Belled vermilion

Of the gooseberry bloom;

Rain on the river.

On Humor: On Mating Donkeys and Onions

When you cross donkeys with onions

mainly you get a lot of onions with big ears.

That’s the first part of the joke.

The silliness language invites,

the aimless

consequence of play

when you’re just playing around

plucking this and that

out of endless possibilities

and putting them together.

The mind fucking off for the afternoon.

Fun, you bet, but

not essential;

and not really what you’d hoped for

crossing donkeys and onions

the only way they can be crossed–

in minds wild enough to join them

just to see

what happens.

And what happens

is you mainly get

onions with big ears.

But love invariably rewards imagination,

so every once in a while you get

a piece of ass

that brings tears to your eyes.

Watering the Garden
on the Hottest Day of the Summer

Hey, Fence Lizard!

Think it’s gonna rain?

Heh-eh-eh:

You were wrong.

Palms to the Moon

1

We were fifteen. Summertime.

We walked through the moonlit village

to the cliffs above the beach.

We made love at that trembling pitch

where sensations become emotions,

none of which we’d ever felt before.

Our hearts like torches hurled into the sea.

A magnificence

that cannot survive

the innocence

that makes it possible.

2

No beauty without perishing.

No love without that first desolate moment of heartbreak

when you know something is wrong,

but you don’t know what it is,

or how to stop it.

3

Midnight, the mountains,

we make a bed of our clothes

on the granite slab.

Naked beyond skin,

we lift our palms to the moon,

our bodies trembling like the limb of a tree