"He stuffed bear in a cave all winter.
Now we know."
The darkness wins
here . We miss those early birds, the worms
are silent as always under the slow turf . the
spruce and hemlock move their branches against the window .
Our sense of strangeness
displacement
uneasiness is soothed
(by the way) by the way
our bodies curl into each other the early light
wrenches thru, that freshness, then
the busy sound of the pot flushing, the
child waking up, cheerful for a change .
the branches moan a bit in the cold wind.
Day's begun.
The darkness wins
here . a car on the street outside
soon disappears, the sound of birds
loud at dusk, subsides . We live
in this near-winter dark, live near each
other in the darkness, the boy's pre-sleep
whimper-and-moan from the next room grows also
into silence as he goes
down into sleep . We
warm one another finally . The next sound you hear
will be the radiator .
What the hours are,
lines on top of the mountain in November,
a word I 'ad never noticed but in sembral terms, I
quote an ancient allibone, an
alley of bones now turned into
a
semblance . My friend Bolles stays tight with young clits, and
thinks he'll commit suicide by
hanging a show of his drawings on the reinforced steel
plates of a freighter headed for England,
see what survives a 14-day trip . An
other friend has an earache which her friend will soften by
being close enuf to be by . But the
question, what is the question? It is
another wipeshed now . The child sleeps,
Young wife, my love, climbs sleepily to the floor and sits in my lap, I ex
plore hell, only the certainties may wed death, let all that go, I want to
K N O W when I'll be there again, when
you will .
zelda, granite moth, mary jane . the other
chances were 50% . chances
are .
The anchor swings like a camel-quirt these days,
the best stays, ma belle, not
mirabelle, nor kitsch, no kirsch,
what we eliminate,
not picayunes or gauloises, but
where the N sits at the n of nite, not
out of sight . profane . prefound .commit, climb
into it altogether, o candle, o end of,
framboise, the eau de vie of .. How that mountaintop
looks like the plane of . the spotted trees, the lake we all saw from
some angle the
pilots differed, no matter, we
kept the difference / even
we did not know the difference
kept the anger & the love
equal . there's a sequel? no, there
is no sequel . Read the trib tomorrow morning, there's
no sequel . wimmins lib
has take she all, Mr. Hall .
Donald,
keep your prick up . it won't last .
(Witches passed)
The magic stays . the boat leaves . arrives S'thhampton .
Cramped in the lifeboat, still she twitch her ass, an
equal
movement, left to right . Whatsit
doing?
that hand around my right tit?
The hand is steady . Are you ready? Present
passports, please.
"Take it easy, but take it."
Sittin by the farmhouse,
waitin for my friend to come
dog
barks in the distance
boats on the bay as well, it's
a long time, David,
we ain't had no right to some
other girl, some other time of our own, hell,
I don't know what you think of when I think of struggle, but
bit off more than he could . it was apple-blossom time in old
hat and walkin down to the farmhouse by the bay, he stood
for a time, listenin to dogs bark
I think of mountainsides, slickery mud between the rocks
and tree-holds under light rain, my ass full of mud in full camera,
mist across the eyelashes .
I think of driving 72 hours to find
they've already left . Fieldful of snow, 7 feet deep
you gotta walk thru .
What'll we do before lunch?
Brush the sweat off our arms, eyebrows, forehead, nose itches .
How we do not walk or climb or wait, but stand : scan "take it
easy, but take it"
any way you can .
(for Tobe & David : 28.XL70)
S.XIL70 : morning conversation
I sit in the kitchen
from the first light
on, look at the light snow
drifted to the edge of garage roof, snuggled
into the leaf drift.
Carlos eats
the coffee heats
sky lightens to yellow
pale sunlight on
the white walls of white houses
He talks
wanting a refill on the applejuice
Red
coffeegrinder sits
full of
new-ground coffee
The coffeepot coming to boil
talks to me .
Mint grows higher .
cigarette smokes itself in the ashtray .
Carlos lifts the cereal bowl to finish the milk
He talks to me . His own words .
(the news at 5° below: for Ron & Michelle)
Wind out of the West at
10 mph, and snow
drifts down across this hill
slowly and fine . Branches
with a ragged leaf or two move
lightly in the wind outside the window
wisps of white blow from drifted and plowed
piles . Blue
is a color I remember
yesterday from further south . The sun
is California Dreamin' . This is the news
Mouth pressed to another mouth
the sprit of semen, a massive unloading of selves and seed . Food
for our tongues, o very nice indeed .
Fish lie quiet beneath the frozen streams
Ragged leaves move in the wind while
we smile at one another in the dark .
move near sleep .
(after hearing sonia sanchez down at corey)
All that sweet, warm
blackness going down
what do be more dream
than real, sometime, it
bein this grey boy talkin, after
all that hard, sweet
blackness solfening up his heart, seems I
trudge uphill thru the snowfall
thru the trees and lights and havto
spend the next two hours shovelin
sidewalk and driveway clear
of all this white shit .
". . . temperature's rising
it isn't surprising,
she certainly can. . . "
The roofs are high
and the gutters deep .
The sound of
water falling
feeds
our sleep . we are bound
to wrap the sky around us, while
we try to become that tree
our bodies
wave around
while the rain falls and the gutters run full and
the seed leaps .
18.XII.70 : wings
Rain water this thaw, snow
water . water drops
on the needles of spruce . the wind
blows in from west southwest . Water
drips from icicles along the gutters, gutters
loosing a piss-stream of water that the wind
controls, wavers the stream. The birds dream
too soon of seeds.
The top of the hemlock
cracked under the snowload last storm,
tender branches flutter and scratch the west window.
A pattern of sounds and wind .
What's the matter?
Driveway's clear . why worry, friend?
Words come or do not come . The thaw persists
in all our minds . A single crow far off
talks to himself.
CAW . CAW /
be well, crow .
Find yr brothers
someplace south of here .
[1971]