From eastern New England
1.
Columns of mist compress the sky and
erase the earth. There is no higher place, no lower.
We crawl like timid clouds across the pass
beneath the towers of bark, steep and ancient and
unwanting. The water falls from nowhere and to nowhere, and
carves the living stone in million-year ripples
as we wait, crowded at the world-edge, to hill-start
when the way is clearer.
In the valley beyond the fog, a whipbird cries:
“You, who are impossible old and impossibly young!
You, who have travelled the cosmos-breadth to find me at my smallest!
You, who dwarf me as you rest in my arms!”
Silence, and the reply: “I am here!
I am here! I am here!”
2.
Be still in unpeopled space
and be in the perfect moment.
Your body surrounds the World
and shrinks it to body-space
and sweat catches like pale rain
thousand-footed on your lip.
Your thigh crosses mine
and between our chests is only chest.
Far from you, the charred stumps
sit soaked by summer falls, too late
to quell the thick quiet that embraces
this place. Tall grasses from the spent earth
and green-silver garlands from bone-fingers
stirring, whisper of motion to be.
