1142

1141

A Flowerville excursion--

Where all seems in bloom

In this misremembered June.

Did the dark-eyed lady in specs

Take a snap of a rose she'd seen only in prose?

Yes. From which negative, contact-prints

Of petaled affirmation made.

What perfumed desires

Evoked these scented turves of earth?

The cobbled constrictions of place,

Of race, of imbibed inclination.

Where?

Now is both a place and time and the same as then.

1140

1139

1138

1137

1136

1135

The intentions of a winter tree are crafty-pure;

Not to bide, but render the time

With a sentinel dark

Presence of held air and earth:

No hour borne to furnish a white field,

But to moment its standing withal.

1134

1133

1132

1131

1130

1129

1128

1127
The counted hour bemoans its state--
Jostled by its sequent fellow,
Diminished with addition,
And by an unmoving present moved--
Its breathing fleetness
Become a stone of memory.

1126

1125

1124

1123

1122
Open umbrellas on the floor
Fragrant lightly of the rain--
The light-voiced air of the rain in the room
At the tense surface of hearing
Charming the books and dust
And a watcher of beads
On open umbrellas.

1121

1120

1119

1118
What are the minimal requirements
For the beauty and the holiness?
Following the wind
Could these fit in a wave of tree tops?
That sweep to the bay
To the ocean white caps--
Blindness for the holy to see through other eyes;
And beauty to frame what is,
Sea, forest, and all.

1117

1116

1115

Wonder not at an essence,

Or sift a pattern for its spring--

What is hidden's not unfound,

Hazard and habit is one thing.

The morning light has no intention,

Nor's weaving shadow art's invention.

1114

1113

1112

1111

1110

1108

As besotted with clouds

As thought wanting shape,

As one seeking consequence

In a bottle of air--

What seems found, isn't there.

The eye mismeasures to the degree

The beholder projects his quality.

1108

1107

1106

1105
Small words, and blue,
As if melancholy had haste or simplicity,
And efficient calamity 'compassed
With a semaphore of doubt--
Released-- from affection's habit,
And the time become no hour at all,
Alien to oneself.

1104

Musical insinuation

Within your private ear

Sounds emotioned purview

No other may hear.

This precarious displacement

Of internal affairs

Is an oblique rearrangement

To a scoring of cares.

That particulate free form

That echoes the primal day

Is a natural analogue

Of tuned patterns that stay.

1103

1102

1101

The discovered country's time--

That undimensioned point

Lent by memory phantom length

By supposition breadth,

In which its finders seeming flow,

Naming the motions of mind and limb hours

And stitched narratives a life,

Yet ever in one place,

From alpha to omega.

1100

1099

1098

1097

1096