Blue Horses (3 page)

It's spring and Mockingbird is teaching himself
new ways to celebrate.

If you can imagine that—that gusty talker.

And the sky is painting itself a brand-new
robust blue

plenty of which is spilling into the pond.

I don't weigh very much, but right now

I weigh nothing.

And my mind is, I guess you would say, compounded.

One voice is saying, Ah, it's Mockingbird.

Another voice is saying, The pond never looked
this blue before.

Another voice says, There couldn't be a more
splendid world, and here I am

existing in it.

I think, just for the joy of it, I'll fly.

I believe I could.

And yet another voice says, Can we come down
from the clouds now?

And some other voice answers, Okay.
But only for a while.

Let the grass spring up tall, let its roots sing
and the seeds begin their scattering.

Let the weeds rejoin and be prolific throughout.

Let the noise of the mower be banished, hurrah!

Let the path become where I choose to walk, and not otherwise established.

Let the goldfinches be furnished their humble dinner.

Let the sparrows determine their homes in security.

Let the honeysuckle reach as high as my window, that it may look in.

Let the mice fill their barns and bins with a sufficiency.

Let anything created, that wants to creep or leap forward,
be able to do so.

Let the grasshopper have gliding space.

Let the noise of the mower be banished, yes, yes.

Let the katydid return and announce himself in the
long evenings.

Let the blades of grass surge back from the last
cutting.

Or, if you want to be poetic: the leaves of grass.

1.

Why should I have been surprised?

Hunters walk the forest

without a sound.

The hunter, strapped to his rifle,

the fox on his feet of silk,

the serpent on his empire of muscles—

all move in a stillness,

hungry, careful, intent.

Just as the cancer

entered the forest of my body,

without a sound.

 

2.

The question is,

what will it be like

after the last day?

Will I float

into the sky

or will I fray

within the earth or a river—

remembering nothing?

How desperate I would be

if I couldn't remember

the sun rising, if I couldn't

remember trees, rivers; if I couldn't

even remember, beloved,

your beloved name.

 

3.

I know, you never intended to be in this world.

But you're in it all the same.

So why not get started immediately.

I mean, belonging to it.

There is so much to admire, to weep over.

And to write music or poems about.

Bless the feet that take you to and fro.

Bless the eyes and the listening ears.

Bless the tongue, the marvel of taste.

Bless touching.

You could live a hundred years, it's happened.

Or not.

I am speaking from the fortunate platform

of many years,

none of which, I think, I ever wasted.

Do you need a prod?

Do you need a little darkness to get you going?

Let me be as urgent as a knife, then,

and remind you of Keats,

so single of purpose and thinking, for a while,

he had a lifetime.

 

4.

Late yesterday afternoon, in the heat,

all the fragile blue flowers in bloom

in the shrubs in the yard next door had

tumbled from the shrubs and lay

wrinkled and fading in the grass. But

this morning the shrubs were full of

the blue flowers again. There wasn't

a single one on the grass. How, I

wondered, did they roll or crawl back

to the shrubs and then back up to

the branches, that fiercely wanting,

as we all do, just a little more of

life?

Shiva, pretend you are with me

as the doe in her summer-red coat

tiptoes
down

through the pines

and enters the pasture.

She neither hurries nor hesitates.

She knows exactly how carefully it must be done.

Shiva, I know the odds.

If the fawn is where she left it, the world
in that moment goes on being created.

And if the fawn has vanished, it is the destroyer's hour.

Lord of Life and of Death,

I just wanted you to stand here for a moment
not like a god but like a mortal being

to see for yourself how the doe
carefully

vanishes

into the grass

and when she emerges how the heart leaps joyful

if the world steps out beside her. That little dancer
still licking milk from its lip.

One has to say this for the rounds of life
that keep coming and going; it has worked so far.

The rabbit, after all, has never asked if the grass
wanted to live.

Any more than the owl consults with the rabbit.

Acceptance of the world requires
that I bow even to you,

Master of the night.

If I walk out into the world in irritation or

self-centerness, the birds scatter.

I would like people to remember of me, how

inexhaustible was her mindfulness.

The hurricane may find us or it will not, that

will always be the way.

With Shelley, I feel the visceral experience

of imagination.

Can you imagine anyone having a “casual” faith?

“This is what I know from years of being me,” said

a friend.

You will always love me.

About God, how could he give up his secrets and

still be God?

If you think you see a face in the clouds, why not

send a greeting? It can't do any harm.

Do stones feel?

Do they love their life?

Or does their patience drown out everything else?

When I walk on the beach I gather a few
white ones, dark ones, the multiple colors.

Don't worry, I say, I'll bring you back, and I do.

Is the tree as it rises delighted with its many
branches,

each one like a poem?

Are the clouds glad to unburden their bundles of rain?

Most of the world says no, no, it's not possible.

I refuse to think to such a conclusion.

Too terrible it would be, to be wrong.

I'm not the river

that powerful presence.

And I'm not the black oak tree

which is patience personified.

And I'm not redbird

who is a brief life heartily enjoyed.

Nor am I mud nor rock nor sand

which is holding everything together.

No, I am none of these meaningful things, not yet.

The oak tree
loves patience,

the mountain is
still looking,

as it has for centuries,
for a word to say about

the gradual way it
slides itself

back to the
world below

to begin again,
in another life,

to be fertile.
When the wind blows

the grass
whistles and whispers

in myths and riddles
and not in our language

but one far older.
The sea is the sea is

always the sea.
These things

you can count on
as you walk about the world

happy or sad,
talky or silent, making

weapons, love, poems.
The briefest of fires.

There is no king in their country

and there is no queen

and there are no princes vying for power,
inventing corruption.

Just as with us many children are born

and some will live and some will die and the country
will continue.

The weather will always be important.

And there will always be room for the weak, the violets
and the bloodroot.

When it is cold they will be given blankets of leaves.

When it is hot they will be given shade.

And not out of guilt, neither for a year-end deduction
but maybe for the cheer of their colors, their

small flower faces.

They are not like us.

Some will perish to become houses or barns,
fences and bridges.

Others will endure past the counting of years.

And none will ever speak a single word of complaint,
as though language, after all,

did not work well enough, was only an early stage.

Neither do they ever have any questions to the gods—
which one is the real one, and what is the plan.

As though they have been told everything already,
and are content.

I do not know what gorgeous thing
the bluebird keeps saying,

his voice easing out of his throat,
beak, body into the pink air

of the early morning. I like it
whatever it is. Sometimes

it seems the only thing in the world
that is without dark thoughts.

Sometimes it seems the only thing
in the world that is without

questions that can't and probably
never will be answered, the

only thing that is entirely content
with the pink, then clear white

morning and, gratefully, says so.

Franz Marc was born in Munich in 1880. He was a part of the Blue Rider group of painters, to which Wassily Kandinsky also belonged. In 1916, while serving in the army, he was struck in the temple by shrapnel and fatally wounded. He was 36 years old.

My thanks to the editors of the following magazines in which some of the poems previously appeared.

American Scholar,
“After Reading Lucretius, I go to the Pond” (under the title “Summer Work.”)

Portland Magazine,
“The Vulture's Wings”

Appalachia,
“Stebbins Gulch”

Parabola,
“I'm Not the River” and “I'm Feeling Fabulous, Possibly Too Much So. But I Love It”

Orion,
“Blueberries”

Some of the lines in “The Fourth Sign of the Zodiac” (poem 3) I “borrowed” from a poem previously published in
Five Points.