SIMULACRA
Tree-trunks
buttressed against wind
& seasons of rain crested chickadee
peeto-s from redbud branches a tangle
of tea leaves in a yellow gaiwan
edged with cranes hailstone
honey bee the wren's cocked tail
a wilderness of reserves & timber leases
refuge of frost & stars of fire & sumac
stands of prickly pear a bluff against
a floodplain where the Spoon River meets
the Illinois wood thrush larkspur
sugar pine ruby-throated hummingbird
a measured meadow a shifting resembling
something human rather than world
a moveable plethora the bank littered
with small hills of bone canopies of
bear-skins & branches eight-spear heads
within a mammoth rib-cage
*
Beneath the pressed
earth a locust
horse bones an enemy whose lips have been
sawed off the white of two moths
a second as a killing thing chipped flint
dolmen stone table an economy
of placelessness stone as the skeleton
of this casualties of dwelling
light tree darkness seed midnight barred
owl in a hemlock tree columbine sprouting
from rock interpolated in the cliff's face
muffled vastness marauders traveling
towards a time of no & nothing
of heat & crowding a word a presence deferred
like any to conceal a waterjar a white-throated
sparrow dead wood mistaken
for bone for wellworn for a culture that will
replace even its originator & the land
becomes common & again
*
A cardinal's
red fray as he circles
on the line a ruby-crowned kinglet
in October migration flitting white then
gold does pilgrim mean without
place or progress a bison trail for railroad
slate-colored junco for windrow
of dead trees a crown a bower
to carry
away the world the old seabed that is
now the Great Plains "he told me
death was dead" "many a bitterness—had
been—" the bobwhite's once familiar
call "a vast zero" a sound a weed
a record of malice dawn drawn down by
a zest for one kind of living & not
another 15,000 bodies buried in a rocky ravine
land of little use to most goes
unnoticed for 200 years scrap
scarp twilight forge & plot
*
Dark spread on
sound rocks shells
broken plates wine bottles some
sound spread
on dark here lies the wild sea
here lies
a greened gap a syllable for neck for chest
for spring some stones depicted a hand
cutting down a tree some carved
sandstone into figure of neck & head here
lies a boy in a tree a blank & unfocused thing
some "familiar species that perished
by the door" gathering wood & consoling
ourselves buried outside the walls
with "eyes that looked on wastes"
& a "blank—and steady wilderness"
a litter of bean poles wrapped
in thin bark for carrying away corpses
& the wounded this dead man this pale
wood this black horse
a lead horse a hearse for now
*
To see dimly
is to see
the ground covered in beads tawny & loosed
in sandreed bottlebrush & sage smudge
ground-cherry horned-lark nightfall
want a shell a boy inside stopless
a body a heavy white frost "the red—
blaze" of the morning undreamt—
a ceremony underpins it rocks ice
water air to distinguish a certain
shatter for certain this nutshell
goatgrass
a bull elk's bugle in fall rut
French's shooting-star at Lusk Creek
that a self is the extension of all these
a midland of hickory & oak a flock
of coreopsis black walnut & sugar maple
rawboned airy fine
how far
are you from aslant or asunder
rain
on dry leaves on unable & undone |