TO BE ASCETIC
the orchard (1)
Go on with the shadow
of one underneath
a canopy / between rows of oranges
upon rows of mulberries
of white fig and / unripe persimmons.
Who are these people
anointing each other w/ plums
and halved grapes / pineapples
pears and lemon wedges
/ loquats?
And beetles eating and ants
who wield their white eggs
to and fore, a long time,
wrens that come to
regard each other / by the way
the pigeon (2)
Go on out and eat
something in the night.
Black garage of night, go on
with the shadow of remainders
and sour blossoms, the flesh shaken
out of an orange / some beetles
in the hairs of a little
nest that falls
a trap door (3)
The way something shaved feels
like a dog or the back
of a boy’s head / a piece of light
slides down the fence
and away
the mountains & the evening
that has fallen on
a persimmon (4)
before it goes white& flinty
and is lettering the daffodils
and is / drawn on
Bur-chervil & Dogbane thinning
and falling to dusk
Go on with the shadows that run
it through the trees and up the trees
by way of some system, and (out of) asking
look, there
the persimmon tips the edges of
a hand of leaves /
and small white bells
then plumbed from
Putting on a path btw houses / go
on with the shadows that skim shifts
of grass, the grass in heaps, and mists’ rising
crown clearing at newly dark
the hand (5)
on the back of a spider bolting,
on cicadas or locusts or the backs
of moths glimmering, a scoop of gnats
in the shower at dusk , a separation of feet
from the sound they make on the roof:
the May beetle, June beetle
The hand the foliage had
in sneakings out.
Which ever way we met
in the green lawn
on the soft of our backs
and lay there
itching awn and spikelets
, making out of the grass
some stars
a mountain(6)
With this face to us, like a blunt cusp
in the yellow grass. Pale and hard at night.
In the angled grass, the night,
spitting in your hair.
That is this yellow field, the wolves to the moths
that are this / field of the face
in each darkness, of the sky in a crevice
that is cracked wheat, and jutting-up
roots, an orange on the back
arching over /
(5)
It is a pigeon or dove, the way
it breaks off and goes up,
it would have to be someone
intensely afraid
The one of two places, the tree
to be beneath, tree that shakes
things off and breaks
the way we break off and go
out or in, the pale outline
of doves or pigeons falling away
from the rafters, outline of my hands or yours,
I can not decide.
- - - -
You, who I have known, dumb
from work, are on the back
of a drawing. Your dark nostils
blot the page. You have drawn my back
to you, my whole back, on the last page
of a large leaf and another, of my mouth full
of gills. You are working for
this picture, the relation it makes, the scene
we have made in the upper story of a guest
house, fumbling for the hour and the next thing,
drawing out the sound of
, where the twigs
and trash are
equally skewed
Her wake of twigs
and trash, printing your car
with delicate feet.
(5) Summer
Go on, as a wolf, to you. My face lies
like a blunt cusp in the yellow
grass; it is my aim
to be pale and hard. Be in
bed at dusk, in the angled grass,
spitting in your hair.
Your hands are under
my gold head, my watch,
and things are coming
of soft dirt.
of dirt that’s dust
and worked over.
(4) the pigeon
Go on out and eat
something in the night.
Black garage of night, go on
with the shadow of remainders
and sour blossoms, the flesh shaken
out of an orange, and beetles
in the hairs of a little
nest that falls.
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