for none but a simpleton would put cucumbers 
and the like on a par with the sun and the moon.
           
             Zenobius, Proverbs, Lyra Graeca, III.

Almost 
rounded moon,
Its unspilling
meniscus-

Light.

Honeyed face of the sibylline
earth.

Everything message, every randomness
twigs fallen just like that   here

bright lined bulging square.

Pepo   pepo   pepo
bird-ripe
fruit of melon, cucumber, squash, pumpi-
kin

slimy-seeded   cries   hot
August bouncing.

Sweet the push push out of the cell

mint watery by waysides
soft-leafed basil
tipped by bushy bracts

cusps of the moon.

Under the fingernails
dirt, flour, yeast

crusts of the sun.

Walk down the road until you go under it.

              . .

Dew on the wheat filed wells up bread.
Stars, grass, fruit, all variants

Bite down.

The light travels like salt
The dark is thirst
deep shadows
of longing for more light-

But is not the longing for shadows
brightness

earth of the meeting tides?

                . . 

Wood white
large white little white
littler fritillaries

wayward

"lords" of air.

Green plums red plums yellow sun
grizzled dotty (newsprint) juice
the drupy fruits

     signz
          places

always russing somewhere
A leaf's moist papery crescent sloughs off.

Of silver-waxy bloom
of cuke uncurls
I sing.

The flea lights brisk upon
one tucked foot in the dark.

Mark.

               . . 

Written veins the stones' intrusions
wander
untranslated rocks.

Me goes leaping full and empty.

Now the dead dare coming closer.

All is inscribed, 
nothing feeds them,

every day a heavy vulval loaf.

Are you ready
to go down
by the water?

What cannot be said
will get wept.

We live a little patch it doth
go forward
into grief

small lilac leafed
no blossom
white feather, blossom. 

                     . . 

Travel through
picking and washing.
Flesh level, iridescent.

Roads travelled, roads untravelled
often equal.

Heavy as stone, loose as honey
earth
is constantly falling into earth.

So dress for the journey.
Pink for the cave
Pink for the endless stairwell

One hell, two deaths,
three tasteless oatcakes.

                   . . 

What starts and calls and whistles
through the long clicking night?

Littoral, on the jot and tittle coast-
line,
plup,
that the
little tides
catch into gravel, stars.

What I miss most when dead is the travelling
and after, stars
the shining sun and moon

crisp cucumbers in season
the apples bright
black-seeded pears.

But when I am living, bite hard
into the crossroads

cukies wet and apples sweet
I can sing and I can eat.

                 . . 

Bury
unbury

life deciduous as the moon.

                 . . 
                  .

 1983