II

My Place was loosing the
great beauty that came on horse reaching out to me as I lay
locked, no I won't and running after, I want I want. Nearly
falling like a ghost, telling it like a ghost, becoming wet.
Waiting.

I'll take it out again, the asking for candy and sweet in
the woods where they go. I know of course, and can't get
through, just skating on thin ice out of danger bringing them
candy and sweet away from the toes, being caught.

So then there seemed to be many things. She almost caught
me, as I looked up and was falling or I was looking down and
was falling. This was there worry.

I didn't know how far
it could extend, where ever the first move is to be made.

They hammer on the trees in the woods   those boys, wearing
white shirts, and guns.

III

Now it sours. The things I made, I guess, are all a result,
held away, the latter portion blooms.
Evelyne watched all
the way through, the medium, rattling around, how, was it being
sized up, when it is being left, unattended.
     I can see now
whay I cut it away and called it my own. They were cut away, the
swhole world blooms. I cut the dead branch off the honeysuckle,
it started out last June going halfway up the porch.

It is better now the dead portion is cut away. It is still
true that I can fold, I mean the room can tilt, but half and
hald, that's how it blooms.

I don't know it exactly, but he was struck blind when women
had pleasure the most that they did not want to hear; or saw
wrongly. Was he born one way and then the other. But he knew
both as a man, lay dying, along the stream of blood to talk.

One side sleeps, the other awakes. I would not worry of dream,
if I were you. It does not lurk, Saying it now, if you care to
remember, oh, Did I say that?

    Nobody knows what they want. They
can plan it out and get thta beautiful construction, I mean
mine is the most beautiful but I never get what I want. You
can't put the rocks in your mouth on the seashore, rub them
in your eyes.

V

Came up on a horse. Those
days were like breaking through sunlight, where the sand would
bite at the feet. God is with you. I do poems before I go
to sleep, these are dream poems, there is Snow White's bottom.

How high are the fences around? There are still areas to
play in, washing hair, poor Joanne. Margaret took her first
bite by herself.

And the terrible boredom, waiting, in the sun, with a house
folded of cardboard and crayon people against the walls. Carrots
the girl next door, and we ate them.

Also the stone road goes
down perilously, the same pier awash, the water slide into the
deep depths.

reprinted from Places To Go, Black Sparrow Press, 1970