Here's Something Now, and: The Famous Dream of Sergius P., and: Lost Rudiments

Here's Something Now

Songbird outside my window says:
"Sweet enough. Sweet enough.
                              Sweet, sweet, sweet."

The artist's model, a florist from town,
reclines on a broad window sill, facing the garden.
Old sycamores, a sleeping owl, a neighbor
tending his yard.
                         From a distance,

say where deer lie in shadows of tulip trees,
she may seem a bowl of peaches,
still life of terracotta, thatch and flowers.

How much secret beauty there is in the world.

There is the traveler in the tale
who grew cold and sleepless on a stranger's couch,
his spirit, thin. Who went
barefoot and shaking to her bedroom door.

If this were fiction, he might enter and be warmed.
Might huddle next to her, her body kindling
his heart and his groin. Might reach for her
as if he cannot help himself.

In such circumstances giants, heroes
and others generously blessed may be
overcome by sorrow. Might even ask their hearts
to stop beating for the sake of the story.

On the first night home from his journey,
a man looks at his wife on the other side of the bed.
She has shaved her pudendum. She is weeping.

What is the question here, and
which of us will ask it?

The Famous Dream of Sergius P.

White wolves in the walnut trees
and fresh cowflop to heal the princess' eczema.
Miracle that a thousand sacks of rice
fly after my darling in a flock, like geese.

I have not slept in weeks for living
in a fairytale; a neighbor wife is bending
naked by a pool, the thief of peace.

Call out the swan boats!
Mine is the voice of Sancho Panza,
pleading to be made governor of some small island.
Or some bit of sky.

In my tale the means of entry and escape
is a small place in the wall disguised by watercress
where a brook runs through.

Clothe me in thrushes feathers.
I will make a sound and call it singing.
I will sigh, and call it prayer.

Lost Rudiments

– for Nan Oslund Farady1942–1996

There was an ocean, everywhere.
There was a turtle 12 feet long.

No wonder stories linger of how the world began.
Like fossils in arroyos of our songs.

Outside the bitter river
live horse-footed men.
And infants, born clutching milky stones.

There sits a man with a lion beside him.
Giant fish swim through the trees.
I come there sometimes in my heart
to listen for your voice.

St. Joseph of Cupertino, the aerial saint;
you said he loved the Blessed Virgin, and so could fly,
easy as Beryl Markham in her white silk blouse.

The door of the temple is closed today,
for there is war.
I wonder if you see the tops of everything.
And whether you look back to see yourself, asleep.

Do you see how empty is this room
where I sit by a window under stars, awake.
The pond asleep, the endless mountains dark.

Five million years ago on a bright morning,
our kinfolk picked up pointed sticks and moved
across the savannah from a dry lake
toward a swift stream they had heard of.

Odor of sweat and dead fish filled their nostrils.
A dollar was worth nothing.
They had their sacred post, they were alive,
and that was surely something as long as it lasted.

They would not imagine, as you did,
David Hume at prayer.
Or Frollo the archdeacon falling from Notre Dame.
Or us, teaching metal to fly and plastics to sing
because we learned how.

Do you know our hearts, you who are sky-clad now?