(a postponed revision of “The Carpenter” from 1966)

I grew in the roots all winter,
wine waiting to rise;
I mellowed in wood till you made me see
the luxury of chair and table
set in a frozen skeleton of maple.
So seeing, I cut and killed the tree.
You made what you wanted
and we moved on.

I swam in a rolling tide of pine.
All the coniferous, brittle
turpentine trees
breathed into me
spirits of ordinary needles.
Then you began to see
how broad pine beams
build structure into dreams.
Again I saw timbers
toppled and trimmed,
treated for use.

Then I spoke in the oak’s rough tones,
grumbling green solidity.
I grew tough,
drew up gnarled and huge.
But soon enough
hard floors and solid stairs
called for the oak, broken and cut.
You cancelled the monument,
moving on.

Kneeling about the base
of a towering cypress temple
tended by storks and egret priests,
I needed to grow to know the grace,
the grand patience of that place.
I rose to an insular spike of pride,
mystical spire spun with thin green,
when again at the edge of understanding
you stepped away and wanted
weatherproof wood
so your structures would stand
when you moved on.

Save me the still willows,
silent, to wait on.
Stay, let me sit a while,
shifting and watching,
sifting my will
slowly away.

(22 July 1975 — a good example of ruining a poem by revision?)

Cherry blossoms charged pink,
blinked of rich red future rush
of fine new fruit,
falling
freshly to me;
only too soon did I see,
reposing in now-familiar limbs,
that smooth red wood would so well suit
for carving fine rich furniture;
cutting and milling it
I moved on.

Ranging
in wide rolling tides of pine,
forests of firs, all the coniferous brittle
turpentine trees
breathed on me
a fresh crisp needle-fragrance;
I grew as wild and wide as that common tree.
But then I began to see
how broad pine beams
build structure into dreams —
and again I saw
timbers toppled and trimmed,
treated for use.
I moved on.

Along a lonely road
a live oak leaned and spoke
roughly in rich tones to me:
moss-bearded sage,
issuing wisdom gray with age,
grumbling green solidity.
I grew tough,
drew up gnarled and huge;
but soon enough
hard floors and solid stairs
called for the oak, broken and cut.
Nothing was left then but
to move on.

Kneeling about the base
of a towering cypress temple tended
by storks and egret priests,
I needed to grow to know the grace,
the grand patience of the place:
insular spike of pride,
mystical spire spun with thin green.
But then,
again at the edge of understanding,
I stepped away and wanted
weatherproof wood
so my structures would stand when I
moved on.

Save me the still willows,
silent, to wait on —
soul, let me sit awhile,
shifting and watching,
softly waiting,
sifting my will
slowly away.

(1966)

Adam,
cutter of cords,
died giddily in a greedy gamble.
Fading intuition knew and rang the only knell,
and in the reverberations of that solitary bell
mindstrings stirred into mad ensemble,
seeking lost chords.

Death —
resting, maybe —
is this the time to take the test,
to stalk and trap my anmal defeat?
But no.  The echoing knell recedes and bares my grave,
I hold on to my bones and guts and meat,
forget this death like all the rest,
greedy zombie —
living.

(26 Aug 1974)

The present flashes in and out
raising a spray of instants
in its wake.

Riding the moving moment
on a fresh-waked mind
I am in time

until I’m twisted away afraid
out of the stream
suspended

slowly to sink in the lake of today
and swim in all the
used seconds.

(14 July 1974)