age tundra, taiga, they of the

naked sperm

do whitebark pine and white pine seem the same?

a sort of tree

its leaves are needles

like a fox’s brush

(I call him fox because he looks that way)

and call this other thing, a

foxtail pine.

A HEIFER CLAMBERS UP

a heifer clambers up

nighthawk goes out

horses

trail back to the barn.

spider gleams in his

new web

dew on the shingles, on the car,

on the mailbox—

the mole, the onion, and the beetle

cease their wars.

worlds tip

into the sunshine, men and women

get up, babies crying

children grab their lunches

and leave for school.

the radio announces

in the milking barn

in the car bound for work

“tonight all the countries

will get drunk and have a party”

russia, america, china,

singing with their poets,

pregnant and gracious,

sending flowers and dancing bears

to all the capitals

fat

with the baby happy land

AUGUST ON SOURDOUGH, A VISIT FROM DICK BREWER

You hitched a thousand miles

north from San Francisco

Hiked up the mountainside       a mile in the air

The little cabin—one room—

walled in glass

Meadows and snowfields,       hundreds of peaks.

We lay in our sleeping bags

talking half the night;

Wind in the guy-cables       summer mountain rain.

Next morning I went with you

as far as the cliffs,

Loaned you my poncho—       the rain across the shale—

You down the snowfield

flapping in the wind

Waving a last goodbye       half hidden in the clouds

To go on hitching

clear to New York;

Me back to my mountain       and far, far, west.

OIL

soft rainsqualls on the swells

south of the Bonins, late at night. Light

from the empty mess-hall

throws back bulky shadows

of winch and fairlead

over the slanting fantail where I stand.

but for men on watch in the engine room,

the man at the wheel, the lookout in the bow,

the crew sleeps, in cots on deck

or narrow iron bunks down drumming

passageways below.

the ship burns with a furnace heart

steam veins and copper nerves

quivers and slightly twists and always goes—

easy roll of the hull and deep

vibration of the turbine underfoot.

bearing what all these

crazed, hooked nations need:

steel plates and

long injections of pure oil.

THE WIPERS SECRET

Down in the bilges

or up out of sight on the bulkheads

time after time

year after year

we paint right over the dirt.

The first engineer

he knows.

but what can he say?

the company says

save time.

ONCE ONLY

almost at the equator

almost at the equinox

exactly at midnight

from a ship

the full

moon

in the center of the sky.

Sappa Creek near Singapore

March 1958

AFTER WORK

The shack and a few trees

float in the blowing fog

I pull out your blouse,

warm my cold hands

on your breasts.

you laugh and shudder

peeling garlic by the

hot iron stove.

bring in the axe, the rake,

the wood