I pardon shadows and open doors for ghosts.
I know the apparitions
By the twang they give my nerve endings,
And it’s not just people
But dead animals I see,
Their fearful symmetry.
Even landscapes that have been
Return to the place I’m standing.
Neighborhoods appear
With time in arrears.
What is immaterial
Takes on transparent form.
For me it is Grundnorm
To approach things unseen,
To compose a place
For living space to rest,
To toast the friends
Neglected at their best,
Amend wrongs of time
With thankful rhyme.
To pull those voices out of air,
Their absence must the heart bare.

1
Mid March and I count four robins and a woodpecker
And yesterday I heard a cardinal in full voice.
No one knows how heavy the pages of winter are
But it is the birds that fly out of the last.

2
Nothing better than this anonymity.
All my observations are like a mirror
In which I can celebrate nature in myself.

3
Today the rain turned into snow
And back into rain so subtly
That no one seemed to notice
The fragile glass work of the moment.

I’ve seen a country church
Balance on the pinnacle of its spire.
I’ve seen a falcon over a tobacco field
As when lake green rises above the horizon,
Slingshot beyond the cliff.

I’ve seen black volcanic sand
From the height of earliest time.
I’ve seen blue sky from the nearness
Of such vastness I was borne aloft,
Breathing the distance, feeling its depth.
Hearing the expanses in my name.

I’ve seen heat pockets of space
Like transparent sign posts
To a place beyond the void
And I’ve felt the coldness of night winds
Crash against my chest like waves
And successive vacant ocean winds
Pirate sleep until sun could anchor day.

I’ve even heard echoes of distance returning,
Transhorizontal vistas revisited,
Or elevation taking shape
When sitting backwards on Swiss trains
I sensed the rift in my destination contract
And mountains begin to rise.

I know the distance of strangeness,
Of vagueness in a face, and of last goodbyes;
The distance also when a step isn’t possible;
The distance from the beginning of a dream
To the ends of the earth– all distances;
And the timelessness of my own distant now.

That train goes nowhere
The track ends at Steams Station
The fog there is dense
The conductor is mad
And in the faces of people I meet
In every language I hear
Even when a traveler manages
A few clear words
The unknown by the more unknown
Those who preach proselytize politicize
The unknown by the more unknown
The unknown crowed
Certain convinced intractable
Ancient graffiti on walls
That track-side flash
Between the unknown
And the more unknown