Decoration

Decoration –


Families used to walk
Along Dula Road in the summer,
And the children could turn,
Without looking,
Into the curves and banks
Of the unpainted pattern,
To the heartbeat song that always
Poured from the ditches,
Milkweeds, Queen Anne’s Lace,
And from the forest walls
That were another kind
Of green entirely.


The old women always wore
Darkrimmed glasses, square black shoes,
Dresses that buttoned down thin and
Frail. Their eyes always followed the
Ground, to the curve of the road. Their
Voices held a strain, unmusical,
Sorrowful even in passing.


Even their church singing
Was never graceful, as that
Was their place to leave things
Forever behind them.


In deep summer, I would walk
To the yard at dusk, without
Knowing, just to be.

I would stand at the concrete
Corner post, where my grandfather
Once pitched me over,
Barely in time, muttering curses,
To turn and strike an Angus bull
On the forehead with his hammer;
Where we pulled a bloody chicken
From its wooden box, flapping
Red drops through the garden
Without understanding.


Late summer, we put flowers
On the graves after church, and
In the earliest memories, were
Some women who there vented
Lifetimes of madness, worries,
Lost children, fearful dreams,
Visions of a glorious after – invoking
All things into a wailing call to God,
Sprawling on the ground, their bunned
Hair coming untangled, without a word
Said to our child’s eyes.


Along the Parkway home, sometimes
We could pass Brown Mountain, where,
In early fall, false lights would balloon
Up from the gorge, entwined as living
Things. Where my father once found
A dead calf in the pasture, bloodless,
Missing a leg, taken neatly at the shoulder.
Where I stood in the cooling dusk
With my grandfather, in a moment
Among millions, unremarkable
In every way, for some reason
Burned deep in my mind.


A child whose eyes are open
To the world, who keeps a part
Of that world alive, who feeds the
Energy of those living times,
Who feels the names of places,
Who reads the words in eyes
And hands… This child can
Never be lost in time. Can never find
Themselves erased in the misery
Of present without reference,
In the ignorance of places that
Only are now, only are one thing,
Only are remembered in false
Light.

Eclipse

Eclipse

It is a genuine feeling, to let go of the old prejudice of dying,

And those things that come with the shifting moons.

I can remember, the warming balm as water and dust thrown together

The mercury rising, fading

Yellowjackets on crusty lunchroom boxes.

They were angry at dying, someone said to me, angry at dying

It meant, to me, it meant an all-eclipsing dryness.

I would listen at night hoping to stave off the katydids, as they signaled to me the end of things.

I dreaded that first red turning of the forest wall,

The freezing ground of morning, the cold rides in the tiny truck that smelled of carbon and firewood,

The daily worry of a young man not grown and fearful he will never be,

The uncertainty of seasons  - I wanted things to live, forever, in a straight line.

In September we would ride the horses across the mountain to the old cemetery, and I would

Touch the birth-swelled pods on the edge of the field to feel the 
Insect pop of the seed on my fingertips.

I step over the graves and pray to them; they are timeless things I have always seen.

I lead the horses around them and they crop the still green
Grasses and think of nothing, their eyes a bright stillness late summer hides vibrating with insects, 
Veins under muscle, all feeling the shift of moons.

I watch their chins for the first whiskers of cold, the yellow eggs of botflys, 
And other signs that life will grow,

Again  - In time, I could see that life’s circle was the only true thing, and within it there is no end.

The red inside the leaves is always there.

The yellowjackets will sleep deep in the earth, all of one mind and body.

Their death is only the shedding of old skin  - There is a peace in the dark insectless nights,

In the cold of the moon, tangled in naked fingers, held in false light and waking,

And sad that it will come again, all things eclipsed at evening, uncertain, eternal,

All things moving in endless articulation, 
Peripheral encounters overlapping in widening circles forever.

Ephraim in the Stars

Ephraim in the Stars 

As we are minds
As wee see cold
Feel the moonlight, shift and move
And see our fears
In the dark and narrow
In barren circles,
Light in our way
Oh, the deepest darkness
Oh, the silver moon
Ephraim in the Stars
Lord, suzerain 

At night she walks
The deepest dark
The wild mountains, and fiery stars
And she is fearful
In the dark and narrow
And it is a terrible thing to be lost
Oh, the deepest darkness
Oh, the silver moon
Ephraim in the Stars
Lord, suzerain 

As we have eyes
And light in our way
There are things that hate to be seen
Belly of a whale,
Light over the mountain,
Eye up in the heaven,
Wheel inside a wheel
Oh, the deepest darkness
Oh, the silver moon
Ephraim in the Stars
Lord, suzerain 

Who spreads her fingers
In lunar angles
Whose belly holds the silvery seas
Whose ears are buried
Whose mouth is vapor
Whose eyes are cancer
Whose voice is unclear
Oh, the deepest darkness
Oh, the silver moon
Ephraim in the Stars
Lord, suzerain

Eastern Sun

 Eastern Sun

The mud-red,

Rutted road ends

Without ceremony,

At a Baptist church, of

All things, high, flat above

The canyon, where a century

Behind us, in a dark past, a group

Of dirty men cornered ancient families

Within the walls, killed some, but failed to see all.

We have come to ride the small,

Navajo ponies down the canyon walls.

I stand on this alien ground, still fascinated

By the rocks at my feet, the clean smell of

Sage, and other evergreens I have never seen.

The ponies sprawl like dogs in the sun around the

Sheet-metal barn. They smell like no horses I have

Ever touched. They fight like wild things, the dusty stallions

Among them screaming and blowing cold from their muzzles. I

Pull one’s leg through a knotted rope he has coiled around himself,

And pat the base of his neck and speak softly to him. He is a mottled gray

And white, wiry and long-muscled, and his eyes shine with something like

The feeling of running power. He is the one chosen for me to ride, and the small

Navajo man shows me curving water brand on his hip, and tells me that all of these small

Horses come from the ones left by Kit Carson. He says that name with all the hatred in the world.

As we cross the bright sage fields, other horses come up from the water to watch as we turn

To the narrow decline that swings back and forth. We pass a brass marker in the stones,

Drawings on the walls, reference to sun, moon, water, some with no apparent link

To the world slowly expanding around me. To any world I have ever seen.

I am small in the canyon, and as I follow my wife on her small bay,

We come to a hogan. Beside it, a small red firetruck, unfaded.

Terrel says this was his home, and beyond it, a tall rock

Pointed to the sun. It is Spider Rock, he tells me,

The place where bad children were taken

And eaten, and their white bones litter

The narrow top. “But I always did

Whatever I wanted,” he says,

"Nothing on earth scares me."

On the canyon floor,

The horses nuzzle

At three points,

Breathing,

Seeing,

All.

Ascending –

Dreaming, seeing-

I feel the air losing its life,

As the evergreens slowly give

Up their breath, far below, thinning

Through the afternoon canyon, still

Alien to me. My pony pulls and blows

With great effort as his tough, unshod feet

Echo with hollow dullness on ancient stones,

Femurs, over sheep skulls. I allow him total control,

For I have no idea where to go. I pat the base of his neck

Once again, as if he needs something from me to go on. He is

All things now, and if he were to step wrong, we would both plummet

Equally, silently, finally into the cooling shade of the ancient

Walls. The past flows through me in flashes. I do not

Understand any of it. I stop trying. Blindness takes

Me, holds me. I do not want to see what these

Walls have seen. What the generations of

These ponies have seen. I feel it deeper

Than seeing. Becoming all things,

Losing all. Breathing, pulsing

Changing nothing. Flowing,

In the swirling madness

Of all time, or absent

From it. Dust in my

Lungs, the blood-

Life holding on.

Surrounding,

Screaming,

Silent.

The Dark, Small Wolves

The Dark, Small Wolves


At the edge of the lot, it becomes something larger.
Tongue lolling, slinking without fear
It falls under the long bus shadow.


It seeks the old blood held inside.
It circles, becoming the wolf alone
That once sought the bleeding buffalo, the bear-guarded carrion.


It has grown larger with time,
Has darkened around the neck, lost the telling angles
Of degeneration. Without the wolf, it becomes more like them.


Inside, the musicians have worshiped them as the face
Of the old earth deity. The wild things of the night. The teeth of the world.
They have brought out the smell of blood, for all to feel.


At night, it stalks out without fear, paces from the light.
Wherever there is food, there are mouths to take it
Wherever there is night, the small wolves will fill it.

Summer Hill

Summer Hill

My feet sideways

Crabwalking

Up the hill so steep the horses walk around it

And up through the old woods

To crop the summer grass

Once there, I am above the trees

I study

This is impossible, I say

This glacier canyon side

In North Carolina

On a class trip to Linville,

The ranger said we were standing in once Africa

Without understanding,

I walk down and sit

In the cooling grass below

In turkey feathers, I twirl them

In the future, we think they were once dinosaurs

Chicken-minded, tiger striped wings

Running on dragon legs

From nothing

Must I shut this from my mind?

Other children seem happy

To be in the present

Never thinking of the past

But I always go back, so long

I once knew a man named Lazarus,

From Africa

Who came to far away Carolina

For his children

In the shadow now

Water passes in its circle

Through the dark canyon

Eternal, healing miracle resurrection 

Memory -

Above me, there is a log barn

Its chinks long dropped and decayed

And above that

Up the long obtuse incline

One of the old men, Virgil

Looked into this valley

Cattle-worn

And succumbed to disease

Strangled himself

Memory: In the attic of the barn, I find a military cot

A leather saddle losing its sheep-skin, liquor bottles

Among the patchwork cattle is a wild pony from Assateague

I hide and watch it

Fearful, burred, alone with the cattle

White eyes rolling, it bolts from men

Clattering smooth creek stones

Into the valley, disappears

Now, this is purely in my mind

I keep it there, always recurring

Should I put this away?

Is there more in this to know?

I look for crows

I hide back in the weeds with a slingshot

Tearing at the forks

From launching the blue black state gravel

Always swinging wide, landing near where

The crows had been

My mother said if I killed one,

She would hang it from my neck

To fix my dark mind

The chainsaw roars

Vibrating the tall, dead oak

Beneath it, I am small

Carrying cut limbs to the metal barrow

One falls from the sky

And I go away

Into memory

A dark path

Two crows are fighting

The winner flies away

The other, looks to me

Mouth open

A red, buzzard head on a crow body

In my mind it says:

                                   I am done

                                   Send me back

                                   Have mercy

                                   Crush me

I think back

Immediately to a dark time

When my mind died

And was resurrected

To feel with things

And so I am an instrument

For living now.

Nearby is a red steel pole

And in my hands it passes the old soul

With a final squawking breath

In the creek are small black spirals

Clung to smooth stones

The pulse and breath of the resurrection

The force that shaped the valley floor

With their small gray tongues

They move in inches

No memory

No time, no time

A Flood at the Head of Little Rock Creek

A Flood at the Head of Little Rock Creek

The dark veins of the mountain
Force clouds from the rocks
As the voices of cicadas beneath the earth,
Too thousand to count, exhale with 
The flood. The late greens stand before
Winter, even glowing, ever
While long waters flow.

Dark spaces shine in mist of rain,
The whole air is dense with living breath
Scoured deep in the earth
Carried down with a part of the sky.

I feel the electric pull of power
As I step down the bank
Near unreasoning force
Which neither cares nor sees,
Only moves with the world.

Beneath the waters small stones roll
Over others, breaking apart
Exhaling vapor as matter,
Resounding in the chambered streaming earth
Where deep veins are becoming 
As long water flows from the peak of Roan.

Down the stream there is destruction,
Loss and sadness. Men watch as their yards become
Strangling lakes, crushing unnatural weights
As water moves with the world, perhaps
To annihilate and return all to flow
Once again through its veins.

I watch as the stream becomes a clouded
River, forever, through the laurels,
Mossy stones, deer tracks, old bones grown young
And thinner. I pull the clean, wet life into my lungs
And imagine that all worlds are at some point the 
Same, and I am at some time without reference,
Soon to be returned to this sacred vapor.

Wherever life flows from such pure places,
It is held for a time in a strange dimension.
As I dip my hand in the stream, my burdens are
Swept to another. I see my life as it is. I am small
In the wake, frail in the current, immeasurable in the way
That all moving things waver.

Final Rest

Final Rest


I marked your last days
Cropping the early winter grass
And walked up the rise
Through ridges worn like steps
To where you stood head down
And patted the spot where some old saddle had worn you white
Knowing we could send you back to the creator
With a soul that had never been broken
With feet that had been mended
Many times
And a back that had blankets
Against the cold
And eyes that never searched an empty field
So you could rest
But I could tell
By the way you looked
Far-off
Even through the ground
That you had reached the point of passing
But were still here
In the joy of this time
You followed me to the gate
And as I reached to open it
I felt your long face
And breath on my back
And I knew that you were thankful
Even to me
But even more
To the thing that makes grass green
To the sun on your withers
To the field within your vision
And to the light
Even as it faded.

A Crow Seen Through a Winter Storm

A Crow Seen Through a Winter Storm


A school board meeting in Ledger, North Carolina. A winter afternoon, storms and snow are blowing in across the mountains. The meeting house is bordered by steep peaks worn bare by cattle. I glance through a high window -


Framed in glass
Riding the pulse of air, pushing upward
Fighting to stay on earth,
Among the low clouds of churning snow


Perfectly fitted to the whirl,
Ragged in old black form
Against the silent whipping snow,
In wonderful bleak December


I have frozen it in my mind
To keep that place from dying


That day was a waste, given to pointless labor.
Empty words and fluorescent light.
I was struck by the power of a simple sight,
That brought me from that place


To a shining inner memory -
Fragments of seasons, triggered by limp cattle-wire
By nameless coves, the ordinary somehow frozen
And endowed with the glow of the eternal


The places we take with us, where we live always
Are those moments we save from the torrent