A Thousand Mornings (2 page)

TODAY

Today I’m flying low and I’m

not saying a word.

I’m letting all the voodoos of ambition sleep.

The world goes on as it must,

the bees in the garden rumbling a little,

the fish leaping, the gnats getting eaten.

And so forth.

But I’m taking the day off.

Quiet as a feather.

I hardly move though really I’m traveling

a terrific distance.

Stillness. One of the doors

into the temple.

THE FIRST TIME PERCY CAME BACK

The first time Percy came back

he was not sailing on a cloud.

He was loping along the sand as though

he had come a great way.

“Percy,” I cried out, and reached to him—

those white curls—

but he was unreachable. As music

is present yet you can’t touch it.

“Yes, it’s all different,” he said.

“You’re going to be very surprised.”

But I wasn’t thinking of that. I only

wanted to hold him. “Listen,” he said,

“I miss that too.

And now you’ll be telling stories

of my coming back

and they won’t be false, and they won’t be true,

but they’ll be real.”

And then, as he used to, he said, “Let’s go!”

And we walked down the beach together.

LINES WRITTEN IN THE DAYS OF GROWING DARKNESS

Every year we have been

witness to it: how the

world descends

into a rich mash, in order that

it may resume.

And therefore

who would cry out

to the petals on the ground

to stay,

knowing as we must,

how the vivacity of
what was
is married

to the vitality of
what will
be
?

I don’t say

it’s easy, but

what else will do

if the love one claims to have for the world

be true?

So let us go on, cheerfully enough,

this and every crisping day,

though the sun be swinging east,

and the ponds be cold and black,

and the sweets of the year be doomed.

BLAKE DYING

He lay

with the pearl of his life under the pillow.

Space shone, cool and silvery,

in the empty cupboards

while he heard in the distance, he said,

the angels singing.

Now and again his white wrists

rose a little above the white sheet.

When death is about to happen

does the body grow heavier, or lighter?

He felt himself growing heavier.

He felt himself growing lighter.

When a man says he hears angels singing

he hears angels singing.

When a man says he hears angels singing,

he hears angels singing.

THE MOCKINGBIRD

All summer

the mockingbird

in his pearl-gray coat

and his white-windowed wings

flies

from the hedge to the top of the pine

and begins to sing, but it’s neither

lilting nor lovely,

for he is the thief of other sounds—

whistles and truck brakes and dry hinges

plus all the songs

of other birds in his neighborhood;

mimicking and elaborating,

he sings with humor and bravado,

so I have to wait a long time

for the softer voice of his own life

to come through. He begins

by giving up all his usual flutter

and settling down on the pine’s forelock

then looking around

as though to make sure he’s alone;

then he slaps each wing against his breast,

where his heart is,

and, copying nothing, begins

easing into it

as though it was not half so easy

as rollicking,

as though his subject now

was his true self,

which of course was as dark and secret

as anyone else’s,

and it was too hard—

perhaps you understand—

to speak or to sing it

to anything or anyone

but the sky.

THE MOTH, THE MOUNTAINS, THE RIVERS

Who can guess the luna’s sadness who lives so briefly? Who can guess the impatience of stone longing to be ground down, to be part again of something livelier? Who can imagine in what heaviness the rivers remember their original clarity?

Strange questions, yet I have spent worthwhile time with them. And Isuggest them to you also, that your spirit grow in curiosity, that your life be richer than it is, that you bow to the earth as you feel how it actually is, that we—so clever, and ambitious, and selfish, and unrestrained— are only one design of the moving, the vivacious many.

A THOUSAND MORNINGS

All night my heart makes its way however it can over the rough ground of uncertainties, but only until night meets and then is overwhelmed by morning, the light deepening, the wind easing and just waiting, as I too wait (and when have I ever been disappointed?) for redbird to sing.

AN OLD STORY

Sleep comes its little while. Then I wake

in the valley of midnight or three a.m.

to the first fragrances of spring

which is coming, all by itself, no matter what.

My heart says, what you thought you have you do not have.

My body says, will this pounding ever stop?

My heart says: there, there, be a good student.

My body says: let me up and out, I want to fondle

those soft white flowers, open in the night.

HUM, HUM

1.

One summer afternoon I heard

a looming, mysterious hum

high in the air; then came something

like a small planet flying past—

something

not at all interested in me but on its own

way somewhere, all anointed with excitement:

bees, swarming,

not to be held back.

Nothing could hold them back.

2.

Gannets diving.

Black snake wrapped in a tree, our eyes

meeting.

The grass singing

as it sipped up the summer rain.

The owl in the darkness, that good darkness

under the stars.

The child that was myself, that kept running away

to the also running creek,

to colt’s foot and trilliams,

to the effortless prattle of the birds.

3. SAID THE MOTHER

You are going to grow up

and in order for that to happen

I am going to have to grow old

and then I will die, and the blame

will be yours.

4. OF THE FATHER

He wanted a body

so he took mine.

Some wounds never vanish.

Yet little by little

I learned to love my life.

Though sometimes I had to run hard—

especially from melancholy—

not to be held back.

5.

I think there ought to be

a little music here:

hum, hum.

6.

The resurrection of the morning.

The mystery of the night.

The hummingbird’s wings.

The excitement of thunder.

The rainbow in the waterfall.

Wild mustard, that rough blaze of the fields.

The mockingbird, replaying the songs of his

neighbors.

The bluebird with its unambitious warble

simple yet sufficient.

The shining fish. The beak of the crow.

The new colt who came to me and leaned

against the fence

that I might put my hands upon his warm body

and know no fear.

Also the words of poets

a hundred or hundreds of years dead—

their words that would not be held back.

7.

Oh the house of denial has thick walls

and very small windows

and whoever lives there, little by little,

will turn to stone.

In those years I did everything I could do

and I did it in the dark—

I mean, without understanding.

I ran away.

I ran away again.

Then, again, I ran away.

They were awfully little, those bees,

and maybe frightened,

yet unstoppably they flew on, somewhere,

to live their life.

Hum, hum, hum.

I HAVE DECIDED

I have decided to find myself a home in the mountains, somewhere high up where one learns to live peacefully in the cold and the silence. It’s said that in such a place certain revelations may be discovered. That what the spirit reaches for may be eventually felt, if not exactly understood. Slowly, no doubt. I’m not talking about a vacation.

Of course at the same time I mean to stay exactly where I am.

Are you following me?

WAS IT NECESSARY TO DO IT?

I tell you that ant is very alive!

Look at how he fusses at being stepped on.

GREEN, GREEN IS MY SISTER’S HOUSE

Don’t you dare climb that tree

or even try, they said, or you will be

sent away to the hospital of the

very foolish, if not the other one.

And I suppose, considering my age,

it was fair advice.

But the tree is a sister to me, she

lives alone in a green cottage

high in the air and I know what

would happen, she’d clap her green hands,

she’d shake her green hair, she’d

welcome me. Truly

I try to be good but sometimes

a person just has to break out and

act like the wild and springy thing

one used to be. It’s impossible not

to remember
wild
and want it back. So

if someday you can’t find me you might

look into that tree or—of course

it’s possible—under it.

THE INSTANT

Today

one small snake lay, looped and

solitary

in the high grass, it

swirled to look, didn’t

like what it saw

and was gone

in two pulses

forward and with no sound at all, only

two taps, in disarray, from

that other shy one,

my heart.

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.

EXTENDING THE AIRPORT RUNWAY

The good citizens of the commission

cast their votes

for more of everything.

Very early in the morning

I go out

to the pale dunes, to look over

the empty spaces

of the wilderness.

For something is there,

something is there when nothing is there but itself,

that is not there when anything else is.

Alas,

the good citizens of the commission

have never seen it,

whatever it is,

formless, yet palpable.

Very shining, very delicate.

Very rare.

TIDES

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.

OUT OF THE STUMP ROT, SOMETHING

Out of the stump rot

something

glides forward

that is not a rope,

unless a rope has eyes,

lips,

tongue like a smack of smoke,

body without shoulders.

Thus: the black snake

floating

over the leaves

of the old year

and down to the pond,

to the green just beginning

to fuzzle out of the earth,

also, like smoke.

If you like a prettiness,

don’t come here.

Look at pictures instead,

or wait for the daffodils.

This is spring,

by the rattled pond, in the shambled woods,

as spring has always been

and always will be

no matter what we do

in the suburbs.

The matted fur,

the red blood,

the bats unshuttering

their terrible faces,

and black snake

gliding across the field

you think you own.

Long neck, long tail.

Tongue on fire.

Heart of stone.

IN OUR WOODS, SOMETIMES A RARE MUSIC

Every spring

I hear the thrush singing

in the glowing woods

he is only passing through.

His voice is deep,

then he lifts it until it seems

to fall from the sky.

I am thrilled.

I am grateful.

Then, by the end of morning,

he’s gone, nothing but silence

out of the tree

where he rested for a night.

And this I find acceptable.

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.