A mark.  A toad
half under a leaf,
an elm.  An oak
over other.  The land
tries to keep
pace with the chart.
Our rivals are the sky.
Rivers are always blue
though few are.
Hills are concertinas.
A map is whatever
blows away from your hand.
Religion.  The sad theology
of losing things.
Follow the bird
till it passes
the edge of your seeing
but you keep going
in the direction it taught.
Thought.  Made. You know
what’s going to happen
always but will you
let yourself know
what you know.
It’s not a play
but it ends, not a play
but people talk.
One by one the woman
leaves the man
till she comes back
the man talks to god.
Where such things are
it is said to be real,
all round it outside
are the dense bushes
of art.  Burning bush
poison ivy spicebush
oleander. The girl
smiles at you like the
curtain coming down.
But where did ‘you’
come from, this is about
it, beyond the bushes,
earth churned up by oxen
you try to shake hands
you squeeze, the squeeze
affects the blood.  You
do something to both of you.
A hole in the wall
with glass in it,
your pretty aunt looks through
and sees what you’re thinking,
the shame of thought,
the weight of having
something on your mind.
Can this you of ours
finally catch up with me?
Farmer with no prairie
and a trunk full of seed?
Is it lawful, is it Bible,
is your pale gingham dress
the sheer of an angel’s wing
left barely fluttering
to shield us from exaltation,
from too much seeing?
If we saw we would not linger
here. Shut up, yes, we are angels
undefined, glorious
potentialities, mute songs,
uneasy company, we are blue
dark shadows in winter,
color of the opposite,
the sound of snow.
For her, Sigrid in Sweden,
north of the normal,
she cracks the soft world
into angles of meaning
blue over black I praise
because she alone
knows that colors are
the opposite of color.