On these sands sorrow
is alien, small, dispersible

all ways as ants
from a gull's skull.

Joy, too, is introduced,

not indigenous, wracked
wig of stems and roots

exposed, with closed inflorescent
eyes. Unison, unison,

dead cry, silenter than sand.

No—to the grass—I say
no—my one sound—

that flashes ten thousand nows.

*

In the great grass river,
wind sines silvers,
I wade in.

On the edge in flickers
you are there and
not there, your limpid hair

lifts or is lost
in the seething seaming;
one way the river

is green, you are
on the side of silver.
I can't say you are

with me, you are
more than with.

*

Scale by scale,
sand climbs
the acorn cap.

We won't be buried into vaster
scales, I think, and so  
hold the fruit until an empty tone

from deepest generation
reaches me,

drop it in my windy
bootprint, go

whistling from every edge of me.

*

Wind's sway finds shape
in dunegrass tips.
I part thick stalks, find

a scatter-plot of
deer pellets. From any
available source, the stalks

take vividness. The wind
through me reveals the intricate
quicksilvers of the short-lived.

*

Eddy in the great
grass river.

Faces flicker,
overlay: you

in a mask of years,
green    silver.

Wind shivers, the mask
falls, you are
there    gone.

*

Nature—I leave it in vaults
of the Late

Standardized, in lovely
19c books, so others may
achieve by its dismissal

the glorious un-naïve. I walk
sands beneath branching
craze-shapes
like cracks
in the
glaze
of this
brittle blue skybowl lately

unearthed, enduring

in despite of trash, jetwash,
endless highwayside.

I walk in deepest despite.

*

Old symmetry,
easy beauty, let me be.  

I also want to know
the drift of speckled weeds

before that widest symmetry.

*

Sassafras sails one
yellow leaf down
the dune's steeps.

It lands on the surface
of the great

grass river—lamp
of contrast,
shy of
symmetry, shining of

its own particularity—
light by which
to find the way back

to this day among days.

*

Haughty ambient
Alhambras malignant
with buttresses, building up

over the sand-road, unaware
of tremulous reflections
where waves vie, the cumulous palaces                   

glide ahistorical, as if over
the long corridor before birth.

*

Thank brevity gulls race
their shadows over
sand—goodbye—thank brevity

the sole's imprint is blown out
of each footprint and in one

shallow depression
a dried white moth's papery flickers
remind me—thank

brevity for all other than
you: whose day in me is

sand over
sand without
end, whose hours

have broken their glass.

*

Take affirmation, more
difficult than indifference—take it.

Wind-pressed grass tips scratch
worm-tracks in sand windy sand

erases. Pull a tip and follow
the livid arcs it traces.

*

Cumulous palaces
gate the far waters:
pink gold and unison.

I speak into this silvergreen blade
three distinctions

you you you

and float it out—news
of the great grass river.

__

x