Honey and Salt Read online

and says, “Another day?”

  God goes to work every day

  at regular hours.

  God is no gentleman for God

  puts on overalls and gets

  dirty running the universe we know

  about and several other universes

  nobody knows about but Him.

  Hunger and Cold

  Hunger long gone holds little heroic

  to the hungering.

  You don’t eat and you get so you don’t

  care to eat nor ever remember eating—

  and hearing of people who eat or don’t

  eat is all the same to you when you’ve

  learned to keep your mind off eating

  and eaters.

  You become with enough hunger

  the same as a tree with sap long gone

  or a dry leaf ready to fall.

  Cold is cold and too cold is too cold.

  The colder you get the more numb you get

  and when you get numb enough you begin

  to feel snug and cozy with warmth.

  When the final numb glow of comfort goes

  through you, then comes your slow smooth

  slide into being frozen stiff and stark.

  Then comes your easy entry at the tall

  gates beyond which you are proof against

  ice or fire

  or tongues of malice

  or itch of ambition

  or any phase of the peculiar torment known

  as unrequited love.

  Foxgloves

  Your heart was handed over

  to the foxgloves one hot summer afternoon.

  The snowsilk buds nodded and hung drowsy.

  So the stalks believed

  As they held those buds above.

  In deep wells of white

  The dark fox fingers go in these gloves.

  In a slow fold of summer

  Your heart was handed over in a curve

  from bud to bloom.

  Harvest

  When the corn stands yellow in September,

  A red flower ripens and shines among the stalks

  And a red silk creeps among the broad ears

  And tall tassels lift over all else

  and keep a singing

  to the prairies

  and the wind.

  They are the grand lone ones

  For they are never saved

  along with the corn:

  They are cut down

  and piled high

  and burned.

  Their fire

  lights the west in November.

  Fame If Not Fortune

  A half-dollar in the hand of a gypsy

  tells me this and more:

  You shall go broken on the wheel,

  lashed to the bars and fates of steel,

  a nickel’s worth of nothing,

  a vaudeville gag,

  a child’s busted rubber balloon kicked

  amid dirty bunting and empty popcorn

  bags at a summer park.

  Yet cigarmakers shall name choice Havanas and

  paste your picture on the box,

  Racehorses foaming under scarlet and ochre jockeys

  shall wear your name,

  And policemen direct strangers to parks and schools

  remembered after you.

  Impasse

  Bring on a pail of smoke.

  Bring on a sieve of coffee.

  Bring on shovels speaking Javanese.

  Open your newest, latest handkerchief

  And let down a red-mouthed hankering hippopotamus.

  Perform for us these offertories in blue.

  Tell us again: Nothing is impossible.

  We listen while you tell us.

  Is Wisdom a Lot of Language?

  Apes, may I speak to you a moment?

  Chimpanzees, come hither for words.

  Orangoutangs, let’s get into a huddle.

  Baboons, lemme whisper in your ears.

  Gorillas, do yuh hear me hollerin’ to yuh?

  And monkeys! monkeys! get this chatter—

  For a long time men have plucked letters

  Out of the air and shaped syllables.

  And out of the syllables came words

  And from the words came phrases, clauses.

  Sentences were born—and languages.

  (The Tower of Babel didn’t work out—

  it came down quicker than it went up.)

  Misunderstandings followed the languages,

  Arguments, epithets, maledictions, curses,

  Gossip, backbiting, the buzz of the bazoo,

  Chit chat, blah blah, talk just to be talking,

  Monologues of members telling other members

  How good they are now and were yesterday,

  Conversations missing the point,

  Dialogues seldom as beautiful as soliloquies,

  Seldom as fine as a man alone, a woman by herself

  Telling a clock, “I’m a plain damn fool.”

  Read the dictionary from A to Izzard today.

  Get a vocabulary. Brush up on your diction.

  See whether wisdom is just a lot of language.

  Keepsake Boxes

  Now we shall open boxes and look.

  In this one a storm was locked up, hoarse

  from long howling.

  In this one lay fair weather, a blue sky

  manuscript.

  In this one unfolded a gray monotone of

  a fog afternoon.

  In each box was a day and its story of

  air and wind.

  Sometimes one shook with confusions,

  processionals of weather.

  “One day may be too much to gather, consider,

  and look among keepsakes.”

  ***

  ***

  Impossible Iambics

  He saw a fire dancer take two flambeaus

  And do red shadows with her shoulders.

  And he met two fools looking on and saying

  Horsefeathers horsefeathers, and he said

  I must bethink myself, I must throw seven

  Eleven, O God am I a two-spot or what am

  I? a who or a what or a which am I?

  And the next day it rained,

  the next day was something

  else again.

  Well, hibiscus, what would you?

  The flambeau dancer did it,

  she and the red shadows she threw.

  Lackawanna Twilight

  Twilight and little mountain

  towns along the Lehigh, sundown

  and grey lavender flush.

  Miners with dinner buckets and

  headlamps, state constabulary on

  horses, guns in holsters, Scranton,

  Wilkesbarre, the Lackawanna Trail.

  Twilight and the blessed armistice

  of late afternoon and early evening.

  Twilight and the sport sheets, movies,

  chain programs, magazines, comics,

  revival meetings.

  Twilight and headlights on the new

  hard roads, boy friend and girl friend,

  dreams, romance, bread, wages, babies,

  homes.

  If So Hap May Be

  Be somber with those in smoke garments.

  Laugh with those eating bitter weeds.

  Burn your love with bold flame blossoms,

  if so hap may be.

  Leave him with a soft snowfall memory,

  if so hap may be.

  ***

  Never came winter stars more clear

  yet the stars lost themselves

  midnight came snow-wrought snow-blown.

  ***

  Kisses, Can You Come Back Like Ghosts?

  If we ask you to gleam through the tears,

  Kisses, can you came back like ghosts?

  Today, tomorrow, the gateways take them.

  “Always some door eats my shadow.”r />
  Love is a clock and the works wear out.

  Love is a violin and the wood rots.

  Love is a day with night at the end.

  Love is a summer with falltime after.

  Love dies always and when it dies it is dead

  And when it is dead there is nothing more to it

  And when there is nothing more to it then we say

  This is the end, it comes always, it came to us.

  And now we will bury it and put it away

  Beautifully and decently, like a clock or a violin,

  Like a summer day near fall time,

  Like any lovely thing brought to the expected end.

  Yes, let it go at that.

  The clock rang and we answered.

  The moon swept an old valley.

  And we counted all of its rings.

  The water-birds flipped in the river

  And flicked their wing-points in sunset gold.

  To the moon and the river water-birds,

  To these we answered as the high calls rang.

  And now? Now we take the clock and put it away.

  Now we count again the rings of the valley moon

  and put them away as keepsakes.

  Now we count the river-birds once more and let

  them slip loose and slip up the valley curve.

  This is the end, there is always an end.

  Kisses, can you

  come back

  like ghosts?

  Lake Michigan Morning

  Blue and white came out,

  Riders of an early fall morning,

  The blue by itself, the white by itself.

  A young lamb white

  crossed on a clear water blue.

  Blue rollers talked on a beach white sand.

  Water blown from snowwhite mountains

  met the blue rise of lowland waters.

  This was an early morning of high price.

  Blue bowls of white water

  Poured themselves into white bowls of blue water.

  There was a back-and-forth and a kiss-me kill-me

  washing and weaving.

  New Weather

  Mist came up as a man’s hand.

  Fog lifted as a woman’s shawl.

  Fair weather rode in with a blue oath.

  One large cloud bellied in a white wind.

  Two new winds joined for weather.

  Splinters of rain broke out of the west.

  Blue rains soaked in a lowland loam.

  The dahlia leaves are points of red.

  Bees roam singing in the buckwheat.

  Russet and gold are the wheatstraws.

  Forgotten bells fade and change.

  Forgetful bells fill the air.

  Fog shawls and mist hands come again.

  New weather weaves new garments.

  Lesson

  In early April the trees

  end their winter waiting

  with a creep of green on branches.

  ***

  ***

  In early October the trees

  listen for a wind crying,

  for leaves whirling.

  ***

  ***

  The face of the river by night

  holds a scatter of stars

  and the silence of summer blossoms

  falling to the moving water.

  ***

  ***

  Come clean with a child heart.

  Laugh as peaches in the summer wind.

  Let rain on a house roof be a song.

  Let the writing on your face

  be a smell of apple orchards in late June.

  Metamorphosis

  When water turns ice does it remember

  one time it was water?

  When ice turns back into water does it

  remember it was ice?

  Love Beyond Keeping

  She had a box

  with a million red silk bandannas for him.

  She gave them to him

  one by one or by thousands,

  saying then she had not enough for him.

  She had languages and landscapes

  on her lips and the end of her tongue,

  landscapes of sunny hills and changing fogs,

  of houses falling and people within falling,

  of a left-handed man

  who died for a woman who went out of her mind,

  of a guitar player

  who died with fingers reaching for strings,

  of a man whose heart stopped

  as his hand went out to put a pawn forward

  on the fifth day of one game of chess,

  of five gay women

  stricken and lost

  amid the javelins and chants

  of love beyond keeping.

  Moods

  The same gold of summer was on the winter hills,

  the oat straw gold, the gold of slow sun change.

  The stubble was chilly and lonesome,

  the stub feet clomb up the hills and stood.

  The flat cry of one wheeling crow faded and came,

  ran on the stub gold flats and faded and came.

  Fade-me, find-me, slow lights rang their changes

  on the flats of oat straw gold on winter hills.

  ***

  ***

  Use your skypiece.

  Let the works of your noggin run.

  Try one way, try another, throw away

  and throw away, junk your first,

  your second, junk sixty-six.

  Keep your skypiece going, your noggin

  running, sit with your eyes shut

  and your thumbs quiet as two

  sleeping mice.

  Moon Rondeau

  “Love is a door we shall open together.”

  So they told each other under the moon

  One evening when the smell of leaf mould

  And the beginnings of roses and potatoes

  Came on a wind.

  Late in the hours of that evening

  They looked long at the moon and called it

  A silver button, a copper coin, a bronze wafer,

  A plaque of gold, a vanished diadem,

  A brass hat dripping from deep waters.

  “People like us,

  us two,

  We own the moon.”

  Little Word, Little White Bird

  Love, is it a cat with claws and wild mate screams

  in the black night?

  Love, is it a bird—a goldfinch with a burnish

  on its wingtips or a little gray sparrow

  picking crumbs, hunting crumbs?

  Love, is it a tug at the heart that comes high and

  costs, always costs, as long as you have it?

  Love, is it a free glad spender, ready to spend to

  the limit, and then go head over heels in debt?

  Love, can it hit one without hitting two and leave

  the one lost and groping?

  Love, can you pick it up like a mouse and put it in

  your pocket and take it to your room and bring it

  out of your pocket and say,

  O here is my love,

  my little pretty mousey love?

  ***

  ***

  Yes—love, this little word you hear about,

  is love an elephant and you step out of the way

  where the elephant comes trampling, tromping,

  traveling with big feet and long flaps of

  drooping ears and straight white ivory tusks—