SUNDAY


(Note--YES! yes, it's "you're sheik"--a play on words, so
one gets an image of a sheik while also thinking chic, stylish, etc.

I have to admit, in general I don't like the "cleverness" of
puns, although this made me laugh at the time . . . oh well . . .)

Dredging has commenced in paradise. There will be a small
window of nontranscendent quiet time to endure. The osprey, she
has fled to a bower of treetops across pond. This might be a good
time to check out the poems here, at The Yurt Master blog. They
have just lately begun to crawl from the lowly, sodded weight
that is our collected poetic brain emanations pulsing up from
under the dampening grass, the new leaf litter, while the fresh
new winds, soon to chap our delicate faces, whip down from
Canada bringing snow, the big raft beds of SNOW known as
snow flakes, the stinging minuscule beads we call sleet,
or what have you. You too can be part of this wavering arm of
New Nature. See John's post here. Looks like the Lions are 0 and
3. Don't fall out of your stadium seating!! So, meetings will take
place over the design of the 42 Miles Press books, Carrie Oeding's
in particular, and the books as a series in general.
Communications have begun with the Designers. Ever notice how I
can't be bothered to make new paragraphs on this blog. Although,
that's not it--I'm willfully challenging readers. No I'm not.
Down deep, at my caveman level, I believe these posts will lead to
poems. Any public writing I undertake seems to serve as some sort
of Ur-Poem to whatever comes next. I'm going to get a flu shot,
only it will be a nasal spray. The spray is composed of the living
virus. The shot, on the other hand, is made of dead little flu
vermin. Every time I get the flu I get this fucked-up fever,
something I've always suffered, but now a fever can really rattle
me. I plan on getting the flu never again. I want free health care.
I want peace on earth and a forest full of bobcats and wolverines
in my own backyard. I want an end to all political campaign
advertising. So. I will take living germs up the honker in order to
stay fever-less. The spray is supposed to be more effective. In order
that I live in this world, the one free of political campaign advertising.

SEPTEMBER SOMETHING OR OTHER




Well, so how is it? I've taken to doing a lot of listening.
It starts when I get home, usually. And part of this is seeing
everything that slowly passes INTO view, like the rose-breasted
grosbeak at today's feeder. I'm constantly with herons and
ospreys and egrets. The plants blow around a lot, of
course, like something from a Terrence Malick
film, but then the thread of all that rustling becomes
a constant, literal shadows and sound through the windows.
It reminds me of the heightened states of awareness I
experienced while bow hunting (years ago). The result of sitting
in the woods for hours and days, listening, and watching. Who
has time anymore? Few. But you simply make time, for
whatever. You MAKE the time. Unpack your schedule. Sit like
a stone in the creek of the wind until you are invisible, like an owl
in the daytime (he can't see me, they think as you come within a
foot of them). Or like the stone in the creek you've become,
everything flowing over you, only the stone is covered with
nerve endings. Ahhhh . . .

It's better than going to the chiropractor.

I've obsessively revised URGE for the five billionth time.
We'll see what happens now. Orphan, Indiana will be out in
a month and a half. The Coldest Winter On Earth in 7 months.
I'm working on The Bliss Tree Photographs. I have copies of
Sky Booths in the Breath Somewhere for 8 dollars (half price).
The Nervous Filaments is going for under 7 bucks on Amazon.
Listen--it's not the money. I want you to enjoy these books . . .

I enjoyed writing them.

It's supposed to be 90 degrees today. In September.
I've still got hummingbirds, single birds on migration, at the
feeders, and they ignore me like the stone I am, water coursing
around me. One great blue heron has been egret-chasing,
turned bully. She makes a peculiar racket, like a gizzard spitting
out metal shavings. Then it gets extremely quiet all over again,
a hundred times a day . . .

WHAT YOU TAKE WITH YOU

She got out of the car. The future broke over the
mountain range like eggs. Cigarette
Smoke trailed languidly from the poor doll’s mouth.
Sinister, the long reptiles, the black
Birds with money dragging in their beaks. She leaped

off the hood of the Impala in only a pair of
barbwire leggings. The seagulls of my youth, she
said, are dead to me now. This was the new frontier.
Pigeons, and gravestones. We stood, me at her elbow,
__one by one the
guitar strings breaking, awash under tamarack trees.

Saloons sprouted out of the canyons, and the ponds
smelled brushed with gunpowder. I know I’m shrinking.
That’s what I said to myself—Everyone is, she spelled out
__in the sand.
Each vista grew tender, deeper than oceans.
Bright Pink, for Pain. Like a fever that starts in the hand.

Someone dabbed at my lips with a dropper, exhaling. In the sky,
hovering over the taxiing of birds, a plane passed
by, then crystallized, and the silver metal of it
melted, and rang. It echoed off the mountains
until there was nothing left in the world but a window

pulling the moon toward the earth. She was drifting, away, over the creek
__and the bridge, over the sleeping robins . . .
Her eyes were the color of two idling trains, but her breathing
__was gentle.
Spiders descended from beams in the ceilings. Choruses began
to bubble up through the floorboards. A gull cried on a cactus. It
__was winter in
Russia; it was snowing in La Porte, Indiana. I remained earthbound.