Off to Provincetown

The Woodsman and I are off to Provincetown early tomorrow morning. My workshop is full and I have two manuscript conferences and a reading. This is my vacation. Actually, I should call it my "vacation from my vacation" since the whole summer is so lovely here.

When I return I will have my first two Vermont College packets waiting in the mail, and it really will be time to get to work. How can my book orders for Fall already be late? Why are students emailing me in July?

Full moon tomorrow--I hope it's clear over the harbor!

What shall I bring you all from the beach?

Part three of FREE BOOKS

Ask and you shall receive:

Creating True Prosperity, Shakti Gawain
Adobe Odes, Pat Mora

Faith

What world do you believe, which weather?
An overcast day shows the plainness of things,
like roof, chimney, stark. The river
under the highway, brown, choked with grass
standing in mud, and the car behind
pressing up, pushing for speed. Gentle lights of trucks
you have followed as guides in fog and snow,
steady, nosing forward like mastadons
wakened at dusk from their long sleep to reassure us
being leaves an imprint, all forms held
in the memory of mud enfolding time.
It's dusk, you know this road. You don't know
which world this is today, whether that black dog
regarding you from a doorstep is the buddha
or guardian of thieves, or just a black dog,
or if their is any difference really.
How can we say there were angels present at the creation
if there are no angels now? Every question
ends in unknowing, the vastest place,
ample and newly unrecognized,
though you believe you are following
a familiar road, going home at dusk.

Untitled

Now I am calling to my old loves,
asking them to help me remember myself, to redeem
whatever compromise we traded for joy.
It is not too late to remember and turn.
I live alone and a bird comes to my window.
I lie on the grass and the wind plays with my hair.
And if I don't feel a man's weight on my body
again, I won't stop wanting, reaching to taste.
Did you think you could shut up desire,
forget love for the world's body
and still be alive, that it would ever stop
hurting to desire? How many places
have we been lost, running from one another?
I lie in my bed, with the stove squatting black
in the corner, windows painted over with night,
silence of night overhead, then some curious
creature moving in the leaves, in its life,
and I listen. In memory, a small "oh"
when his hand finds the wet place, yielding
to open, breath catches, catches me up.
I won't tie up my hair, bolt the door, or stop
calling into the dark because there is a heart there
still answering, however it seems to have moved on,
however I seem to lie alone, each love in me
more alive. From many, one.

Reading

I am reading: Solution Simulacra, by Gloria Frym. United Artists Books. Recommended. I am learning from her. She does some things I do with language and sentence shifts, only better, more odd, more startling. I have the desire to steal whole lines, as if they were in fact already mine.

S.S.C.F

The trees on the ridge cut back
against the wide cleared plain of vision
and new growth, trees thin
and markedly straight
just trunks, like pencils
standing up, bare stalks
and the brush of leaves
on the top branches like a flowering...

A few white butts
scribble the dirt beneath the bench.
They look clean--tight rolled cylinders
of white paper.
The guard comes twice to ask me what;
he stays in his truck;
his face is sour like old sausage.
I am meeting the bondsman. I give
the guard the name. He owns
the names.

The surprise of a crow
rising immense and ink black
from the low field--wave of his soft wings,
and then a dozen more
and the low sun out of a crack in clouds.
The truck crawls the perimeter
covering sight lines.

You might think they
have some secret in there
--some treasure--
so careful and dour it is,
so tight
with sight lines and perimeters,
almost sacred, and you lose
everything to approach,
You give your name and your reason.
The hair blows against my cheek
from the west. That's the sun
settling, not yet down.
It warms my face, makes me squint.
Razor wire in silver curls
along the wall in straight sun.

The white lines of the parking spaces.
Two flags endlessly pluffing.
Poles, thin shadows.
Waiting a long time
the world all wrong here,
what I thought the world was
the heart of it here, what
was always there. I am being
videotaped as I wait.
They own that; I'm subscribed
in their world. They don't like me
walking around. My notebook and
wandering make me
unpredictable. So I wave my arms.
I'm not accused of a crime
but can they tell me what to do, in small
ways, in large ways, these are the rules
hard kernel in the tooth, the bolt
slung into the wall,
here where there are no exceptions.

Gher the Hound

I woke in bloody sheets,
the bandages undone,
the body's dream of pain
unwound, the torn
flesh gapes and yellow curds
of fat up from the maw swell pale--
the sweet fat that makes the curves of my arm
and calf round lovely, and blood
runs red as blessing
to clean the wound.

what flows away

I was walking
in the high meadow, parting waves
of insects in wild grass. The voice said,
lie down here
and be done with wandering.

My thoughts were philandering like bees.
I was transparent, safe as a maiden
in the garden.
No maiden is safe in the garden.
The animal came upon me and I fought,
and beat at its head and neck, went
for its eyes, red as if his shot-out eyes
bled bright and blood exploded
in his skull, a fiery, baleful light.
Claws ripped my arms
and nerves shot up like flames on a screen.
Dog's breath
on my face, sick with my own
blood on his tongue, so once we owned dominion.

And yes, the fruit turns into a bird
and flies away. The flower becomes a bee.

I am a woman and I would not be
meat for the dead.
Lie down here and be done with wandering
for the kingdom is at hand.