Like a child’s thoughts above this broken stone

And that. And I lie down. I lie down in the long grass,

Something I am not given to doing, and I feel

The weight of your hand on my belly, and the wind

Parts the grasses, and the distance spills through—

The glassy fields, the black black earth, the pale air

Streaming headlong toward the abbey’s far stones

And streaming back again....The drowned scent of lilacs

By the abbey, it is a drug. It drives one senseless.

It drives one blind. You can cup the enormous lilac cones

In your hands—ripened, weightless, and taut—

And it is like holding someone’s heart in your hands,

Or holding a cloud of moths. I lift them up, my hands.

Grave man, bend toward me. Lay your face....here....

Rest....! took the stalks of the dead wisteria

From the glass jar propped against the open grave

And put in the shell-shaped yellow wildflowers

I picked along the road. I cannot name them.

Bread and butter, perhaps. I am not good

With names. But nameless you walked toward me

And I knew you, a swelling in the heart,

A silence in the heart, the wild wind-blown grass

Burning—as the sun falls below the earth—

Brighter than a bed of lilies struck by snow.

Pale Rider

I found her beneath the fruiting honeysuckle,

The fallen doe. The hunter had cut her legs off,

And because the doe was so small, killed out of season,

The leg wounds looked huge, like neck wounds.

I found her in summer and then I forgot about her.

But many months later, on a day of cold rain,

And then Unfallen snow, when I was tired because

I had not slept, and because I was tired, anxious,

I walked back to the grotto in the oldest part of the woods.

It is a dark unsettling place and I am drawn to it.

No sun finds its way through the trees, even in winter,

And, as if the place were cursed, birds pass through

Quickly or not at all, and they will not sing. Dusk

Had come early. The steep hill rose up black

Above the cave’s blue walls, and from the water

Pooled on the rocks, the mist was already rising.

I could feel it before I saw it, stirring like the clouds

Of insects that sift through the swales in summer.

And then the mist took on weight and turned silver.

And then it grew heavier still and turned white.

I was having trouble seeing. I heard the call of a night bird,

Far off, perishable, and from the branches, high

And low, water dripped, a dull repeating sound,

Like the sound of many mute people flicking one

Finger slow and hard against their palms. And then

The sound fell off, and the cold mist turned warm,

As if it were coming not from the pools of water