THE WAY OF THE WORLD
The chickens ate all the crickets.
The foxes ate all the chickens.
This morning a friend hauled his
boat to shore and gave me the most
wondrous fish. In its silver scales
it seemed dressed for a wedding.
The gills were pulsing, just above
where shoulders would be, if it had
had shoulders. The eyes were still
looking around, I don’t know what
they were thinking.
The chickens ate all the crickets.
The foxes ate all the chickens.
I ate the fish.
For something is there,
something is there when nothing is there but itself,
that is not there when anything else is.
Every day the sea
blue gray green lavender
pulls away leaving the harbor’s
dark-cobbled undercoat
slick and rutted and worm-riddled, the gulls
walk there among old whalebones, the white
spines of fish blink from the strandy stew
as the hours tick over; and then
far out the faint, sheer
line turns, rustling over the slack,
the outer bars, over the green-furred flats, over
the clam beds, slippery logs,
barnacle-studded stones, dragging
the shining sheets forward, deepening,
pushing, wreathing together
wave and seaweed, their piled curvatures
spilling over themselves, lapping
blue gray green lavender, never
resting, not ever but fashioning shore,
continent, everything.
And here you may find me
on almost any morning
walking along the shore so
light-footed so casual.
If you like a prettiness,
don’t come here.
Look at pictures instead,
or wait for the daffodils.
Not enough is a poor life.
But too much is, well, too much.
Imagine Verdi or Mahler
every day, all day.
It would exhaust anyone.
What keeps us from falling down, our faces
to the ground; ashamed, ashamed?
The man who has many answers
is often found
in the theaters of information
where he offers, graciously,
his deep findings.
While the man who has only questions,
to comfort himself, makes music.
When I lived under the black oaks
I felt I was made of leaves.
When I lived by Little Sister Pond,
I dreamed I was the feather of the blue heron
left on the shore;
I was the pond lily, my root delicate as an artery,
my face like a star,
my happiness brimming.
No, there’s no escaping, nor would I want to escape
this outgo, this foot-loosening, this solution
to gravity and a single shape.
Now I am here, later I will be there.
I will be that small cloud, staring down at the water,
the one that stalls, that lifts its white legs, that
looks like a lamb.
For he was an instrument for the children to learn
benevolence upon.
For he listened to poems as well as love-talk.
For his sadness though without words was
understandable.
For there was nothing brisker than his life when
in motion.
For when he lay down to enter sleep he did not argue
about whether or not God made him.
For he could fling himself upside down and laugh
a true laugh.
For often I see his shape in the clouds and this is
a continual blessing.
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