Blue Horses (2 page)

1.

“Hello, wren” is the first thing I say.

“Where did you come from appearing so

sudden and cheerful in the privet? Which,

by the way, has decided to decorate itself

in so many white blossoms.”

2.

Paulus is coming to visit! Paulus the

dancer, the potter. Who is just beginning

his eightieth decade, who walks without

shoes in the woods because his feet, he

says, ask to be in touch with the earth.

Paulus who when he says my poems sometimes

changes them a little, according to the

occasion or his own feelings. Okay, I say.

3.

Stay young, always, in the theater of your

mind.

4.

Bless the notebook that I always carry in my pocket.

And the pen.

Bless the words with which I try to say what I see, think, or feel.

With gratitude for the grace of the earth.

The expected and the exception, both.

For all the hours I have been given to be in this world.

5.

The multiplicity of forms! The hummingbird,

the fox, the raven, the sparrow hawk, the

otter, the dragonfly, the water lily! And

on and on. It must be a great disappointment

to God if we are not dazzled at least ten

times a day.

6.

Slowly the morning climbs toward the day.

As for the poem, not this poem but any

poem, do you feel its sting? Do you feel

its hope, its entrance to a community? Do

you feel its hand in your hand?

7.

But perhaps you're still sleeping. I

could wake you with a touch or a kiss.

But so could I shake the petals from

the wild rose which blossoms so silently

and perfectly, and I do not.

Why the wasp was on my bed I didn't

know. Why I was in bed I did know. Why

there wasn't room for both of us I

didn't know. I watched it idly. Idleness

can be a form of dying, I did know that.

The wasp didn't communicate how it felt.

It did look confused on the white sheet,

as though it had landed somewhere in the

Arctic. And it did flick its wings when

I raised my legs, causing an upheaval.

I didn't want to be lying there. I didn't

want to be going in that direction. And

so I say it was a gift when it rose into

the air and, as wasps do, expressed itself

in a sudden and well-aimed motion.

Almost delicious was its deep, inflexible

sting.

I'm living in a warm place now, where

you can purchase fresh blueberries all

year long. Labor free. From various

countries in South America. They're

as sweet as any, and compared with the

berries I used to pick in the fields

outside of Provincetown, they're

enormous. But berries are berries. They

don't speak any language I can't

understand. Neither do I find ticks or

small spiders crawling among them. So,

generally speaking, I'm very satisfied.

There are limits, however. What they

don't have is the field. The field they

belonged to and through the years I

began to feel I belonged to. Well,

there's life, and then there's later.

Maybe it's myself that I miss. The

field, and the sparrow singing at the

edge of the woods. And the doe that one

morning came upon me unaware, all

tense and gorgeous. She stamped her hoof

as you would to any intruder. Then gave

me a long look, as if to say, Okay, you

stay in your patch, I'll stay in mine.

Which is what we did. Try packing that

up, South America.

Little Lord Love, he with the arrows,

has definitely shot the last one with my name on it

straight to the heart

now, when I'm no longer young

and it's not so easy to stay up half the night

talking, and so on.

Little Lord, frolicsome boy,

why did you wait until now?

I don't want eventual,

I want soon.

It's 5 a.m. It's noon.

It's dusk falling to dark.

I listen to music.

I eat up a few wild poems

while time creeps along

as though it's got all day.

This is what I have.

The dull hangover of waiting,

the blush of my heart on the damp grass,

the flower-faced moon.

A gull broods on the shore

where a moment ago there were two.

Softly my right hand fondles my left hand

as though it were you.

I woke

and crept

like a cat

on silent feet

about my own house—

to look

at you

while you were sleeping,

your hair

sprayed on the pillow,

your eyes

closed,

your body

safe and solitary,

and my doors

shut for your safety

and your comfort.

I did this

thinking I was intruding,

yet wanting to see

the most beautiful thing

that has ever been in my house.

As I said before, I am living now

in a warm place, surrounded by

mangroves. Mostly I walk beside

them, they discourage entrance.

The black oaks and the pines

of my northern home are in my heart,

even as I hear them whisper, “Listen,

we are trees too.” Okay, I'm trying. They

certainly put on an endless performance

of leaves. Admiring is easy, but affinity,

that does take some time. So many

and so leggy and all of them rising as if

attempting to escape this world which, don't

they know it, can't be done. “Are you

trying to fly or what?” I ask, and they

answer back, “We are what we are, you

are what you are, love us if you can.”

In this book
there are many hummingbirds—

the blue-throated, the bumblebee, the calliope,
the cinnamon, the lucifer, and of course

the ruby-throated.

Imagine!

Well, that's all you can do.

For they're swift as the wind

and they fly, not across the pages but,

like many shy and otherworldly things,
between them.

I know you'll keep looking now that I've told you.

I'm hungry to see them too, but I can't
hold them back even for a moment, they're

busy, as all things are, with their own lives.

So all I can do is let you know they're here somewhere.

All I can do is tell you
by putting my own hunger on the page.

As deep as I ever went into the forest

I came upon an old stone bench, very, very old,

and around it a clearing, and beyond that

trees taller and older than I had ever seen.

Such silence!

It really wasn't so far from a town, but it seemed

all the clocks in the world had stopped counting.

So it was hard to suppose the usual rules applied.

Sometimes there's only a hint, a possibility.

What's magical, sometimes, has deeper roots
than reason.

I hope everyone knows that.

I sat on the bench, waiting for something.

An angel, perhaps.

Or dancers with the legs of goats.

No, I didn't see either. But only, I think, because
I didn't stay long enough.

Every summer I gather a few stones from

the beach and keep them in a glass bowl.

Now and again I cover them with water,

and they drink. There's no question about

this; I put tinfoil over the bowl, tightly,

yet the water disappears. This doesn't

mean we ever have a conversation, or that

they have the kind of feelings we do, yet

it might mean something. Whatever the

stones are, they don't lie in the water

and do nothing.

Some of my friends refuse to believe it

happens, even though they've seen it. But

a few others—I've seen them walking down

the beach holding a few stones, and they

look at them rather more closely now.

Once in a while, I swear, I've even heard

one or two of them saying “Hello.”

Which, I think, does no harm to anyone or

anything, does it?

I step into the painting of the four blue horses.

I am not even surprised that I can do this.

One of the horses walks toward me.

His blue nose noses me lightly. I put my arm

over his blue mane, not holding on, just
commingling.

He allows me my pleasure.

Franz Marc died a young man, shrapnel in his brain.

I would rather die than try to explain to the blue horses
what war is.

They would either faint in horror, or simply
find it impossible to believe.

I do not know how to thank you, Franz Marc.

Maybe our world will grow kinder eventually.

Maybe the desire to make something beautiful is the piece of God that is inside each of us.

Now all four horses have come closer,
are bending their faces toward me

as if they have secrets to tell.

I don't expect them to speak, and they don't.

If being so beautiful isn't enough, what
could they possibly say?

The vulture's

wings are

black death

color but

the underwings

as sunlight

flushes into

the feathers

are bright

are swamped

with light.

Just something

explainable by

the sun's

angle yet

I keep

looking I

keep wondering

standing so

far below

these high

floating birds

could this

as most

things do

be offering

something for

us to

think about

seriously?

Meditation, so I've heard, is best accomplished

if you entertain a certain strict posture.

Frankly, I prefer just to lounge under a tree.

So why should I think I could ever be successful?

Some days I fall asleep, or land in that

even better place—half-asleep—where the world,

spring, summer, autumn, winter—

flies through my mind in its

hardy ascent and its uncompromising descent.

So I just lie like that, while distance and time

reveal their true attitudes: they never

heard of me, and never will, or ever need to.

Of course I wake up finally

thinking, how wonderful to be who I am,

made out of earth and water,

my own thoughts, my own fingerprints—

all that glorious, temporary stuff.

Everything I can think of that my parents

thought or did I don't think and I don't do.

I opened windows, they shut them. I pulled

open the curtains, they shut them. If you

get my drift. Of course there were some

similarities—they wanted to be happy and

they weren't. I wanted to be Shelley and I

wasn't. I don't mean I didn't have to avoid

imitation, the gloom was pretty heavy. But

then, for me, there was the forest, where

they didn't exist. And the fields. Where I

learned about birds and other sweet tidbits

of existence. The song sparrow, for example.

In the song sparrow's nest the nestlings,

those who would sing eventually, must listen

carefully to the father bird as he sings

and make their own song in imitation of his.

I don't know if any other bird does this (in

nature's way has to do this). But I know a

child doesn't have to. Doesn't have to.

Doesn't have to. And I didn't.

I too have known loneliness.

I too have known what it is to feel
misunderstood,
rejected, and suddenly

not at all beautiful.

Oh, mother earth,
your comfort is great, your arms never withhold.

It has saved my life to know this.

Your rivers flowing, your roses opening in the morning.

Oh, motions of tenderness!

I was enjoying everything: the rain, the path
wherever it was taking me, the earth roots
beginning to stir.

I didn't intend to start thinking about God,
it just happened.

How God, or the gods, are invisible,
quite understandable.

But holiness is visible, entirely.

It's wonderful to walk along like that,
thought not the usual intention to reach an answer
but merely drifting.

Like clouds that only seem weightless
but of course are not.

Are really important.

I mean, terribly important.

Not decoration by any means.

By next week the violets will be blooming.

Anyway, this was my delicious walk in the rain.

What was it actually about?

Think about what it is that music is trying to say.

It was something like that.

Angels are wonderful but they are so, well, aloof.

It's what I sense in the mud and the roots of the

trees, or the well, or the barn, or the rock with

its citron map of lichen that halts my feet and

makes my eyes flare, feeling the presence of some

spirit, some small god, who abides there.

If I were a perfect person, I would be bowing

continuously.

I'm not, though I pause wherever I feel this

holiness, which is why I'm often so late coming

back from wherever I went.

Forgive me.