“In a pine tree,A few yards away from my window sill,A brilliant blue jay is springing up and down, up and down,On a branch.I laugh, as I see him abandon himselfTo entire delight, for he knows as well as I doThat the branch will not break.”

“To speak in a flat voiceIs all that I can do.I have gone every placeAsking for you.Wondering where to turnAnd how the search would endAnd the last streetlight spinAbove me blind. Then I returned rebuffedAnd saw under the sunThe race not to the swiftNor the battle won. Liston dives in the tank,Lord, in Lewiston, Maine,And Ernie Doty's drunkIn hell again. And Jenny, oh my JennyWhom I love, rhyme be damned,Has broken her spare beautyIn a whorehouse old.She left her new babyIn a bus-station can,And sprightly danced awayThrough Jacksontown.Which is a place I know,One where I got picked upA few shrunk years agoBy a good cop.Believe it, Lord, or not.Don't ask me who he was.I speak of flat defeatIn a flat voice. I have gone forward with Some, a few lonely some. They have fallen to death. I die with them. Lord, I have loved Thy cursed,The beauty of Thy house:Come down. Come down. Why dostThou hide thy face?”

“All I know is that the fear I have been battling all night is breaking down the door of my ignorance. As my feet slam down I feel not the hard, wet asphalt but the soft Persian rug that led to the staircase in my father’s home. In the glow of lightning the dancing trees are illuminated but I see my mother in the glow of candlelight, spinning, twirling, her hair fanned out behind her. It is falling over me, saturating my thoughts, and I cannot. I cannot let it in.”

“The image of him shifted with the violent frenzy of leaves. He was there and he wasn’t, as the leaves whipped and the lightning fell away in a slow strobe effect across the expanse of sky. How he had gotten up there, I had no idea, but he had been there. Crouched in the tree in the middle of the courtyard, he watched me intently through the open window.”

“And then, when noon comes, Each strangerHas no room left in the lightExcept for only his hands.Here are mine. They are kind of skinny. May I have your lovely trees?”

“A BlessingJust off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.And the eyes of those two Indian poniesDarken with kindness.They have come gladly out of the willowsTo welcome my friend and me.We step over the barbed wire into the pastureWhere they have been grazing all day, alone.They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happinessThat we have come.They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.There is no loneliness like theirs.At home once more,They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,For she has walked over to meAnd nuzzled my left hand.She is black and white,Her mane falls wild on her forehead,And the light breeze moves me to caress her long earThat is delicate as the skin over a girl's wrist.Suddenly I realizeThat if I stepped out of my body I would breakInto blossom.”

“Suddenly I realizeThat if I stepped out of my body I would breakInto blossom. ”