To Earthward

Love at the lips was touch
As sweet as I could bear;
And once that seemed too much;
I lived on air 

That crossed me from sweet things,
The flow of-was it musk
From hidden grapevine springs
Down hill at dusk? 

I had the swirl and ache
From sprays of honeysuckle
That when they're gathered shake
Dew on the knuckle. 

I craved strong sweets, but those
Seemed strong when I was young;
The petal of the rose
It was that stung. 

Now no joy but lacks salt
That is not dashed with pain
And weariness and fault;
I crave the stain 

Of tears, the aftermark
Of almost too much love,
The sweet of bitter bark
And burning clove. 

When stiff and sore and scarred
I take away my hand
From leaning on it hard
In grass and sand, 

The hurt is not enough:
I long for weight and strength
To feel the earth as rough
To all my length. 

On a Tree Fallen Across the Road
(to Hear Us Talk)

The tree the tempest with a crash of wood 
Throws down in front of us is not to bar 
Our passage to our journey's end for good, 
But just to ask us who we think we are

Insisting always on our own way so. 
She likes to halt us in our runner tracks, 
And make us get down in a foot of snow 
Debating what to do without an ax.

And yet she knows obstruction is in vain:
We will not be put off the final goal
We have it hidden in us to attain,
Not though we have to seize earth by the pole

And, tired of aimless circling in one place, 
Steer straight off after something into space.
 
The Lockless Door

It went many years, 
But at last came a knock, 
And I thought of the door 
With no lock to lock.

I blew out the light, 
I tip-toed the floor, 
And raised both hands 
In prayer to the door.

But the knock came again 
My window was wide;
I climbed on the sill 
And descended outside. 
Back over the sill
I bade a 'Come in'
To whatever the knock
At the door may have been.

So at a knock 
I emptied my cage 
To hide in the world 
And alter with age.
 
         The Times Table

More than halfway up the pass
Was a spring with a broken drinking glass,
And whether the farmer drank or not
His mare was sure to observe the spot
By cramping the wheel on a water-bar,
turning her forehead with a star,
And straining her ribs for a monster sigh;
To which the farmer would make reply,
'A sigh for every so many breath,
And for every so many sigh a death.
That's what I always tell my wife
Is the multiplication table of life.'
The saying may be ever so true;
But it's just the kind of a thing that you
Nor I, nor nobody else may say,
Unless our purpose is doing harm,
And then I know of no better way
To close a road, abandon a farm,
Reduce the births of the human race,
And bring back nature in people's place.
 
                     The Bear

The bear puts both arms around the tree above her
And draws it down as if it were a lover
And its choke cherries lips to kiss good-bye,
Then lets it snap back upright in the sky.
Her next step rocks a boulder on the wall
(She's making her cross-country in the fall).
Her great weight creaks the barbed-wire in its staples
As she flings over and off down through the maples,
Leaving on one wire moth a lock of hair.
Such is the uncaged progress of the bear.
The world has room to make a bear feel free;
The universe seems cramped to you and me.
Man acts more like the poor bear in a cage
That all day fights a nervous inward rage
His mood rejecting all his mind suggests.
He paces back and forth and never rests
The me-nail click and shuffle of his feet,
The telescope at one end of his beat
And at the other end the microscope,
Two instruments of nearly equal hope,
And in conjunction giving quite a spread.
Or if he rests from scientific tread,
'Tis only to sit back and sway his head
Through ninety odd degrees of arc, it seems,
Between two metaphysical extremes.
He sits back on his fundamental butt
With lifted snout and eyes (if any) shut,
(lie almost looks religious but he's not),
And back and forth he sways from cheek to cheek,
At one extreme agreeing with one Greek
At the other agreeing with another Greek
Which may be thought, but only so to speak.
A baggy figure, equally pathetic
When sedentary and when peripatetic.

   In Time of Cloudburst

Let the downpour roil and toil!
The worst it can do to me
Is carry some garden soil
A little nearer the sea.

'Tis the world old way of the rain
When it comes to a mountain farm
To exact for a present gain
A little of future harm.

And the harm is none too sure.
For when all that was rotted rich
Shall be in the end scoured poor,
When my garden has gone down ditch,

Some force has but to apply,
And summits shall be immersed,
The bottom of seas raised dry,
The slope of the earth reversed.

Then all I need do is run
To the other end of the slope
And on tracts laid new to the sun
Begin all over to hope.

Some worn old tool of my own
Will be turned up by the plow,
The wood of it changed to stone,
But as ready to wield as now.

May my application so close
To the endless repetition
Never make me tired and morose
And resentful of man's condition.
 
On taking from the top to broaden the base

Roll stones down on our head!
You squat old pyramid,
Your last good avalanche
Was long since slid.

Your top has sunk too low,
Your base has spread too wide,
For you to roll one stone
Down if you tried.

But even at the word
A pebble hit the roof,
Another shot through glass
Demanding proof.

Before their panic hands
Were fighting for the latch,
The mud came in one cold
Unleavened batch.

And none was left to prate
Of an old mountain's case
That still took from its top
To broaden its base
 
            Moon Compasses

I stole forth dimly in the dripping pause
Between two downpours to see what there was.
And a masked moon had spread down compass rays 
To a cone mountain in the midnight haze,
As if the final estimate were hers,
And as it measured in her calipers,
The mountain stood exalted in its place.
So love will take between the hands a face....
 
They are welcome to their belief

Grief may have thought it was grief.
Care may have thought it was care.
They were welcome to their belief,
The overimportant pair.

No, it took all the snows that clung
To the low roof over his bed,
Beginning when he was young,
To induce the one snow on his head.

But whenever the roof camme white
The head in the dark below
Was a shade less the color of night,
A shade more the color of snow.

Grief may have thought it was grief.
Care may have thought it was care.
But neither one was the thief
Of his raven color of hair.