Erasures
First goes the faraway
fashioned apparently of ivory in this light
all the leaves of olive
some large obscuring breath against a glass
basalt and granite hardening to pencils
We are under an upturned boat a keel of stars
just us and the other leaf eaters
closed in for all we know someone is walking
a string above the Colorado
It was not make believe but that backwards
when the given seemed enough
as when some of the moon is used elsewhere
then handed back
Paper with a Sigh
More solvent than water the letters
absorb easily pleasure or grief
the little snail vortex of a “g”
curling on itself a sound
soft or hard and filling with a burden
the writer cannot be silent about
soaking into the paper with a sigh
like letting the light in easy
through a gauze It is different
with numbers they don’t feel
they measure coldly even the end
of a life in stone but letters
can keep intention and love
among the thin ascenders
and ligatures even the ampersand
wanting to be a vine
Divinities
Deer fit perfectly into moments of lapsed attention
as when I was thinking
the wall outside seemed to be moving on its own
or was a trick of the one-sided sun
which we all think is godlike and so beautifully fierce
we cannot look upon its face, so I looked away
and there was the doe at the window
In the history of religion gods move away from us
from the earth to trees to mountains then sky
and we discover a promising emptiness way out past NGC 691
and try to imagine the emptiness as full
In the legends people are always going to hell and coming back
but no one from heaven
So it was divine that in leaving they left us deer
appearing from leaves and the dark night of soil
That was fitting, and they will do
