Bold and Awkward, Mostly Unhurried

Snow falls in mid-April, the horses whinny waiting for hay, and on the white beam of the house reaching up to the east-facing rectangular attic window, a moth in cruciform, frozen to the wood, brown wings splayed.

What - who - do we turn on?

The daffodils extend upward through crumbling soil and dead leaves as if hungry, shades of yellow for which we can take no credit, and yet beget such joy, as if somebody somewhere loves or wants to fuck us.

In the forest, the cracking of branches as they surrender to weights greater than they are allowed to carry, sharp as rifle shots, and then as always in the presence of loud noises, the fear of what died and who is allowed to cry and who if anyone will bear the various blames.

Every time I see a moose I am struck by their gait, at once bold and awkward, mostly unhurried, and for days after, am untroubled by doubting or not doubting God.

Editing old poems so that they are less explicitly about you which, in a sense, makes them even more about you.

Objectivity is a delusion, a persistent one.

We drive to Pittsfield together, sharing tea sweetened with honey, talking about the specific way in which we are happy together and - for the duration of the trip and then days after - needing nothing or no one else.

Knowing is not "yours."

Days later I go back to see what he wrote in reply to my note, read and re-read the sentences, his, and feel grateful and shy, realizing yet again that the decision to love women only is not a law.

Slow-roasting enormous hams we opted not to smoke.

Emerson's insights which at a late juncture transcend - or at least are not effaced by - Thoreau's wild subjectivity, which experience was also Emily Dickinson's, and are treasured thusly.

If you are given to flowers, why not go ahead and be given to bees?

Snow falls all morning in large wet blossoms, out of season yet not unwelcome, as how would the one-who-is-not-separate judge the One-Who-Is?

Cheap wine in mass-produced thumbprint goblets, Seinfeld reruns, wondering what the Latin root of "criticism" is.

The dark art of advertising.

Jasper listens patiently while I try to explain my refusal to fish for shad this year, relating it to killing quail last year, the whole thing yoked to a poorly-thought-out metaphor of black bears - all of them at once - as the Lord, begging me to be quiet, slow, still, mild.

Here a while longer apparently.

The writing careens towards specifically sexual outcomes - messy ones, reckless ones - that it cannot on its own separate from the linear and referential nature of its expressing.

Imagine.