Now



1.

Summer twilights when the earth

twirled from the monster sun

we stretched on the lip

of a grassy hillside,

poised for one sweet moment

of daring any force to pull us down,

and pushed off, unleashing

the wild tumbler gravity

from its cage of balance, whipping

to the bottom, thumping rush

past the box elder and apple

saplings whirling twigs

over roots, the planet

reeling us to the foot of the lawn,

to stagger for our feet on the dew-wet mowing,

woozy with a confusion of axes --



then we loved the bloodwind in our temples,

the tilting strangeness

of the world where we landed,

smell of the baked country

unfolding to the dew,

which fell, we were told, like grace.



2.

Only stop there, and memory is paradise.

That was before any of us knew gravity

would pull harder and harder still, tightening a body to the ground,

and before the attendant miseries and little infernos of betrayal,

others' and our own. It was before anyone died.

The secret of memory is this: what was no paradise

is paradise now, built

and rebuilt from the great circle of dimming sky

wobbling around a boy drunk on play.



What I love now is the weighted sense of being in time,

precarious holding before a reckless lunge,

the way that dizzying roll focused one at the center of things,

dark bushes and stars freshly set in heaven

all revolving on a point, vantage where I watched

and watch -- half gut-sick with speed --

sweeps of time, great scything turns of space.







World



Since those ears of mine flag your head,

our clownish flaps that sear

in winter wind or any sunshine, you'll need

the woolen cap your mother fights you into

before your campaign against the snow --

you'd not guess how the day claws and spits.

It seems an hour ago she struggled muscles and skin

onto your soft bones, stretching flesh like a jumper

to dress the chilly space where you,

in all of history, had not happened before.



Mark this: it could have fallen otherwise.

In Plato's sphere your siblings are numberless.

Only you, sweetest animal, frowning at your gloves

and slogging out to meet the weather, have wriggled

into substance and -- as if in the womb

you ate a match -- whatever burns in substance.

Questions? Comments? Suggestions? Email countryrag@yahoo.com .