wells, ponds, spiky trees,

carvd fragments of soft bodies,

female bellies,

centuries old.

7: VII

I can’t look out over cities without thinking of carpenters, plumbers, hod-carriers, cement-mixer truck drivers, plasterers

how many hours were they paid for to build up Seattle, or Portland, (which has such dark carpets—such white fir skulls—) skeleton lathe behind plaster laid on so cool—creamy under the trowel—dries to a powder, spidery lines. block bricks, shake roofs

san francisco white stairstep-up rooflines. stucco & tile houses laid out in rows in the Sunset—photos after the quake the weird frames of half-broken buildings. lunchpails in unfinished walls— how long since eyes laid on that rafter

in the hills they cast mud & fire it for rooftiles—the gray waves of Kyoto—highschool kids study their english or math in cramp ceilinged second floor rooms to the racket of looms on the ground floor, the shimmering heat of the sun-facing southward scree roof—

new buildings reinforced concrete strung full of wiring and piping, Plant in the basement—walls knock in the night—laundry ghosts chatter on flat modern roofs looking off at the shrine forest hills

the drainage of streets, hollow mountains in rows, noisy with alien molecules burning at speeds past belief, how they sift—how they clutter—

layers of mohenjo-daro, nine cities deep, a kiln at the end of the age built out in the street

forests are covered with mud and asbestos, the riverbeds sucked up and cast into plates hung on melted-down oxides

mankind your bowels are as grinding and heavy as those which forced leaves into coal, burned sand to obsidian; you draw up and lead along water, your arm rises and falls, you break through things as they are.

NANAO KNOWS

for Nanao Sakaki

Mountains, cities, all so

light, so loose.    blankets

Buckets—throw away—

Work left to do.

it doesn’t last.

Each girl is real

her nipples harden, each has damp,

her smell, her hair—

—What am I to be saying.

There they all go

Over the edge, dissolving.

Rivetters bind up

Steel rod bundles

For wet concrete.

In and out of forests, cities, families

like a fish.

LYING IN BED ON A LATE MORNING

Lying in bed on a late morning

A new girl beside me,

I hardly know—

Half-awake, dreaming,

I smile the smile,

you smile, when you sing.

Dreaming and smiling,

dream of your long smooth legs.

LOOKING AT PICTURES TO BE PUT AWAY

Who was this girl

In her white night gown

Clutching a pair of jeans

On a foggy redwood deck.

She looks up at me tender,

Calm, surprised,

What will we remember

Bodies thick with food and lovers

After twenty years.

THE TRUTH LIKE THE BELLY OF A WOMAN TURNING

for Ali Akbar Khan

The truth

like the belly of a woman turning,

always passes by.

is always true.

throat and tongue—

do we all feel the same?

sticky hair curls

quivering throat

pitch of jaw

strung pull