How it turns

in again, the pain

            across my shoulders these mornings .

                                  Possession of the mind

                                  a fragile thing / when the pain

                                  goes,

 then's the time to use it    .     what's left of it .

Men with shovels directed a stream

of sizable pebbles into the excavations

about young new-planted mountain ash trees

set mid-quad in the concrete

from a dump truck    .

I brought back home

a single rhododendron bloom that had fallen .

Outside the cellar door, I spoke to a bee, he
danced before me, crotch to face, he checked me out, he
                         buzzed, I talked, he sat
                               in my beard for a moment      .    We
                                   talked.   I wanted to go inside        .   I told him
                                                     so    .   I did     .

                                                                                                                          16.VI.71

12:30 A. M.
June 17th

Way over to work tonite
I followed the walks assiduously, feet
         clicking the concrete
         dried from the morning's rain.

After writing poems for an hour or some
thing like that, the way back I angled across
lawns
           walks
                     gravel
                                 never
                                           mind the ache in the shoulder, in the
right leg, so it's damp, it's
the shortest way home  .

9:20 A.M.

                                C O R N
8 in. to a foot high in some fields

                                black   .   talk   .   back

The cows are merely silent and further away. Queer.
One red-winged blackbird, his orange trim,
crosses the windshield, flirts his tail   .   Good

M  O  R  N  I  N  G ,      dear

                                                     milkmen!

9:45

Allison likes the music boxes
Allison likes the pink telephone
and the white telephone   .
                                                 Carlos T.
            develops a sense of property .

Livingroom loud with both their angry tears

10:05

Robins on the lawn

            always facing away     .     attentive.

12:30            S  U  N  S  H  I  N  E     S  U  P  E  R  M  A  N

I.                Buttercups .

gardners & tools along the walks.

                           another robin, Donovan.

II.    Walking the power mower along

            the slope    single-handed .

                           phys-ed major .

possible title:   W  H  E  R  E   P  B    S  U  C  K  S    /    T  H  E  R  E    S  U  C  K    I

                                                                                                                                [1975]