POEMS
The Gift
Einstein, an inner-directed man,
had no trouble explaining why his schnapps
didn’t float up off the table.
Gravity was a knot, he said, God tied our galaxy in,
forever, or if you like, energy bound up
in an eternal state of push and pull
and that’s what keeps our shoes
beside the bed at night,
our dreams mostly ordinary.
It’s only the child who points
to the invisible wind with delight,
squishes his banana into his ear
and expects it to talk. What’s given,
and that’s surely everything, some call grace.
I like that. It’s like I’m this marvelous gift
to myself I get to keep unwrapping.
from Wu Wei and Be Broken to Be Whole
COMPANION TO A LOON
So you died, caught, I’ll bet
in that gill net out there
held up by those big orange balls
stretched halfway across Tulalip Bay.
The Indian fisherman had to haul you up
then disentangle you
like so much stringy, green kelp.
It’s unnatural that you should drown
that way, a perfect invention to water.
I’m sure I watched you the day before
yesterday, working the quiet shallows
around the boat dock
straight out from my little cabin.
Listen bird, I’m past making death sad.
The tide has no time for wakes
or tragedies. We’re either coming in
or going out. It’s like that,
the soul for a while boxed up
in feathers or this frail
human body of mine.
I’m just taking a little time out
from my walk because, well,
your drowned body is here
at my feet, even in death,
moving, unruffled.
from Wu Wei and Be Broken to Be Whole
I WANT GOD ALIVE
He stops breathing we’re goners,
just like that, poof goes the sun and the moon,
the front room too and all those people
in America, around the world watching television
right now, big bombs going off and evil everywhere
though God insists there is no evil in anything
He’s made, just degrees of good, so it’s important
to say the least, that God go on breathing life
into everything we understand including the word,
which, in my case—this poem—is praise to God,
so that the trees keep on and the clouds
and the little bay beside my cabin stays right where it is
and full of blue water so the fish and seals
can come in and go out with the tides,
ordinary, everyday events that have me going constantly
for my binoculars to separate bufflehead from golden eye
or grebe. If I get up in the middle of the night
which I sometimes do and walk out onto the porch,
I want the wind to be there, cold even, and the stars
over my head. I want to love everything outright
just like I invented it. I want God alive.
from Be Broken to Be Whole