Chants and Exploratory Lists

  

  

Suddenly Tonight I Am Listening
        

Tonight the rain enters wood through the roots.
Tonight the light-bodies we become sit down
     in our bodies.
Tonight in their ocean, dolphins and sojourns and maples,
     listening.
Tonight the cinnamon and curry and milk that is asking.
Tonight as low rumblings, as water on dream streets,
     as rain walking in a man or woman leading us.
Tonight amber from oats and rustling harbors of wind,
     and clouds of more world about to form.
Tonight the blue jay back in her nest, and her nest
     in our bones through which the night sky passes.
Tonight a horse breathing behind us, luminous,
     vanishing, as in their mountain, feathers
     are speaking.
A bird’s stratospheres in the centers of air know.
Fire flashes from old camps folded in the stones
     holding mind, trees planting the earth
     between stars as between cells.
Tonight the wood carries rains through the sky
     of its body, into leaves and mind.
As all words form again when any is said.

    

  

One River

   

One river roars
Down the field line.
It is a herd of horses
Running out of their tombs.
Their white manes breaking
Into sunlight. . . .

              

[Note: “One River” in Additional Pages 
     is at the right, and click on the 
     above title “Poem Rising Out 
     of the Earth” to read the poems 
     presented on the home page.]

One River was written on an old Underwood
    in Ohio the springs of ’73 and ’74.