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I. The Forests of Grief & Color

Perhaps grief is imagined to end in violence, as if grief itself could be killed. Can we perhaps find one of the sources of nonviolence in the capacity to grieve, to stay with the unbearable loss without converting it into destruction? If we could bear our grief, would we be less inclined to strike back or strike out? And if the grief is unbearable, is there another way to live with it that is not the same as bearing it?

Judith Butler, “On Grief and Rage”

This mycorrhizal network architecture suggests an efficient and robust network, where large trees play a foundational role in facilitating conspecific regeneration and stabilizing the ecosystem.

“Architecture of the wood-wide web: Rhizopogon spp. genets link multiple Douglas-fir cohorts” http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-8137.2009.03069.x/full

… I will open my dark saying upon the harp.

Psalm 49

On a Day, In the World

We had a grief

we didn’t understand while

standing at the edge of

some low scrub hills as if

humans were extra

or already gone;—

what had been in us before?

a life that asks for mostly

wanting freedom to get things done

in order to feel less

helpless about the end

of things alone—;

when i think of time on earth,

i feel the angle of gray minutes

entering the medium days

yet not “built-up”:: our

work together: groups, the willing

burden of an old belief,

& beyond them love, as of

a great life going like fast

creatures peeling back marked

seeds, gold-brown integuments

the color time

will be when we are gone—

Whose Woods These Are We Think

(ekphrastic haibun)

When they ask “What are you working on now that the elements are finished” i say the elements are never finished; in China they have metal, in India they have ether, in the West we are short on time. Wood has also been named as an element. In white Euro fairy tales, children are sent into the woods, probably the Black Forest, carrying baskets covered with cloth made by child laborers just as factories are beginning. When i first read the Frost snowy woods piece as a desert child in the 60s, i experienced a calm as he enters the whose woods these are he thinks he knows, though i didn’t know that many woods in Tucson or a little horse thinking it queer or a village. What would it have been like to be sent out with a small covered basket if you were a peasant child into what we now call the ecotone, the region between two environments—a marsh with striped frogs for example—then on into the woods where a peasant uprising is being planned.

We have sent them all into the woods

We have sent them all into the woods

We have sent them all into the woods

& we know exactly whose thin logged-out woods these are. What do people need from poetry during the changes? The changes are immeasurable. Perception, form, & material locked into the invisible. Many need calm poetry, especially at weddings where they feel uneasy, & i would certainly write that way if i believed calm were key to any of it, but if what woods are left are lovely, dark, deep, they are also oblique, obscure, magical, owned for profit, full of fragile unnamed species, scarce on time, time that barely exists though people base their lives on imagining it does. i hoped to find some wisdom to send back to you & that is what i am working on now, my present hopeful wild & unknown friends …

All-night Crooked Moonrise over Mountain Pines

Scraping, on the horizon— & the disk

rose, throbbing, to the triple cloud—

the enigma responded: in the forest,

a wood mind swayed on the crest

while the angle brought ground water,

always a thin other, down

to the river … Through lace life, late life

light rises bent /// — you stand a while;

& if, at midnight, that raw moon

slashes your bed

through the cage of the blinds,

oh now the sweet owl

calls to its cripple

& hurries across the meadow

where t i m e is carried, tranquil & stretched

—— how can knowledge spread itself thus,

unable to sort itself out? & you might weather this:

you feared no one would love you

& when they did, you feared

you would not be forgiven

such a small word, time

yet it is friends

with both nothings—

The Bride Tree Can’t Be Read

The bride tree puts down its roots

below the phyla. It is there

when we die & when we are born,

middle & upper branches reaching

the planet heart by the billions

during a revolution we don’t see.

Quarks & leptons are cooling

on their infant stems, spinning the spinning

brain of matter, fled to electrical dark

water, species with names the tree

can hold in the shale shade brought

by the ambulance of art;

no one but you knows what occurred

in the dress you wore in the dream

of atonement, the displaced tree in

the dream you wore, a suffering endurable

only once, edges that sought release

from envy to a more endurable loss,

a form to be walked past, that has

outworn the shame of time,

its colors sprung through description

above a blaze of rhizomes spreading

in an arable mat that mostly

isn’t simple but is calm & free—

Brief Walk at Salt Point Park

—seal pups ar-ar-ar- —

& the skin of the soul felt a chill,

especially the left side of the

S, facing the Pacific (specific Pacific

specific Pacific ar ar ar);

sandstock burdock human s pines

(does the s move toward pines or spines?)

— buckwheat hardpan up a hill

finding the rim of the miracle—

fear blue shade sense

blind made what tense

pigmy cypress trill or hill

(knowledge did not wreck experience—)

weather warped & nations fell

over the edge of the miracle—

—What thus doth keep love safe, brittle rhymer

—Depends on what you mean by safe, little climber

(To know without fear the mind of another)

For the Lovers Abandoned in Sunlight

Some friends had broken up—;

i didn’t think they should,

but still… (The bees had also

flown away to the chrome woods—

maybe the workers went ahead, but how?

No one understood—) The lovers

lifted yeses then a no …

Why? (let’s not get into

a whole thing about it …) Their hours never

snagged despair; why could they

not have loved each other more?

One day the hive returned,

like a gold thought in the gray

context of an oversight …

the lovers would find others

all too soon with basic need less

passionate than the first; i went on

with my reading & the bees worked

right up to the finished dusk

as if their house

would stay near mine in a drought-

tested thicket remote in time—

During a Suite by Gaspar Cassadó

Transfixed by the bow

only simply above: sighs of wood

& horsehair breath of the cello,

your azure perceptions /// …

(does it perceive also?)

as if pierced by saudades!

This night far from your pain tangled

with frog song

(such distance to the next town)

& your suffering cannot be measured—

não a luar

in this universal background—

Beneath a Dying Coast Live Oak

—to have made the mistake

of not caring —for one day! —

you stood in the parking lot …

where, on the ground: globe

of the wasp gall (the pupae

cannot peek out

through tiny Garamond ellipsis dots

of the outer shell …)

when suddenly, above:

grrr rrrrr gimme gimme gimme

squirrels trying to mate

in the oak, the dire twain

of their warring tails …

(sex is so much trouble outdoors!)

—the fear the loved ones

would end up alone

since humans will not modify

desire, & nothing

comes together anymore—

democracy & time,

from da: to divide—

there was the love you could not

live without, & you

had lost it, though you stood

inside the life

that gave you life—

[& heard a humming, like the]

—& heard a humming, like the

start of time …

& when the wind agreed,

the knobs of song molecules fit into

the frog, a knowledge heard

the humming, without fear—

(puffball, spinning, among

the dimensions: —

wears itself out,

wears itself out, by evening …)

to know, what, in a day?

to have thought

the children safe, & the little woods—

that thought must be given back …

not safe, & lost — you could

text but they might not text back …

Not to be undone by this.

(even if?) even if.

(even if?) even if.

… to rest

with what must be given up: there was

a breaking at the start of time,

then love that

broke the breaking …

The Forests of Grief & Color

—Listening,

past the hazel bank…. the changed life

lies under, prior

to purr—; new species grow

cold spores, inside

casing strewn … Groups & nations

howl unseen … The mind

god-labors

pumping itself green. It’s

then your true eye

gathers its half

loves; pollen floats

upstream in doubt,

in the shadow of a drought;

(put the phone down,

you’re just about

out of opposites, oh,

dark evening— sink …)

In brief

woods, there’s lignan

at work, past profit,

such comfort to decay, wood

mind would, so small

to say: “apart, fled” —!

Hold in hope, not … out! not to go

out among them, yet …

(to have important work

among the dead—)

The Before Sleep Kind of Everything

(What is the edge of the self—?)

(The edge of the self

is the f, its awning of breath—)

The old woman greets death

in her bed — — the peril cloud

ascends — “well done!”

She dozes off & feels for those

she cannot help but feel fear for —;

Over the ledge

of sound — Vast sage!

It visits her,

she must sleep widely then. — And

when the mild dead hover … she clings

clings clings to the rim

of the prayer wheel — Now

motion goes on to release her —;

she helped you unknow

the half-true —.

After, she greets the greeters …

radiant roots, reluctantly brought:

beside the creamy chaos of the stars —

Composition: Fringe Lichen: Tilde & Mãe

As i have since i was a child in summer, found a rock with a fine example of life;

this time Flavopunctelia soredica, fringe lichen, with tilde-like edges;

to extend a sound where other life could hear,

in hopes of accomplishing nothing, offered punctuation to the lichen, to my

mother who was very quiet at the time

so it would be heard & not heard in the heavenly sphere, at least, as the

brain imagined it there, making absolute motion, in a harmless frame, as

the granite has spoken since i was a child, in other words,

i said mãe

with 10 rows of 12 tildes & 2 rows of mãe, in Portuguese,

i recited the tildes by lifting a finger, recited the “mãe” lines,

tapping toward where she lives very quietly in days she creates …

Composition: Under Cypresses, Near Big Sur

Before bronze winter, unable to get good sorrow through,

choosing a rock where a Xanthoparmelia shield had spread,

facing the full-of-plastic Pacific, eager to include crows,

waiting for one crow to disrupt the cantata of not-crow,

counting by thinking, as for decades, i’ve thought punctuation has features of skylight, tsk-ing,

(my brothers used to say tsk tsk, when we were naughty),

hoping this might lift the dread of being human, & early, relieved by dots in the air,

i repeated a composition 6 times with the crow & tried to breathe humanly, thus:

(for M.W.)

Of Monarchs Again, Especially the Stripes

—or, perhaps we could

care less carefully now …

that they fluttered

in the forest, with mid-

gold clinging to their going … Their cadence

became our anxiety:

night vision, to rest as a speckled gleam,

an ochre glance. The days can sometimes

give them

what they need—that’s

pretty obvious (triangles of

orange— a weight had been dispatched—)

we’re visitors, & only briefly, at that,

—one more flutter

from the spirit world, glittering

time looks on, souls

as seeds, ready to rise, & stay …

as if color has chosen to live,

no matter what

(it both is &

isn’t a metaphor—)

for KH

So, Bacteria Also Have Their Thunder

& cloud caps

in the drought— microbes in my gut &

on the leg of the bobcat, microbes even

on its photo—, buckles near

grasses of perhaps not growing …

no rain this week, no relief sounds … in our grief

here, to hear coastal cypress— beware—

so grown things rain:

between life & nonlife &

death: the whir

under the dove’s wing, to — rows of marigolds,

an end of earth where creatures go

without supervision … such

sorrow i heard—

such sorrow they heard … bacteria

also have their thunder in the nightlight

of the biome, coasting,

outside an arrogant noise

they never made — breaks

energy in sun’s

setting behind a band

of thunder clouds: cracks & volunteers—

Angrily Standing Outside in the Wind

—kept losing self control

but how could one lose the self

after reading so much literary theory?

The shorter “i” stood under the cork trees,

the taller “I” remained rather passive;

the brendas were angry at the greed, angry

that the trees would die, had lost interest

in the posturing of the privileged,

the gaps between can’t & won’t …

Stood outside the gate of permissible

sound & the wind came soughing

through the doubt debris

(soughing comes from swa¯gh—to resound …

echo actually comes from this also—)

we thought of old Hegel across

the sea— the Weltgeist—& clouds

went by like the bones of a Kleenex …

it’s too late for countries

but it’s not too late for trees …

& the wind kept soughing

with its sound sash, wind with

its sound sash, increasing

bold wind with its sound sash,

increasing bold—

[Untitled Day]

In the dream, they were doing better,

i could see that. He had

bought a suit; they could

laugh together (though not always

at the same things);

& where they sat—

a glow (from

the window ledge,

lined with small

recent jars, in fringe-training—)

brought in the common day—

filled not with wisdom

but with insights & their variants—;

when you send in your request

you have to know what

you are working with …

i said to the dream, take

this ordeal … (what’s good

for the night is never

a belief …—) The room

was the gold of five

days in summer

though the chairs were made of wood

from the forest of grief—

Species Prepare to Exist after Money

Turns out bacteria communicate in color.

They warn each other in teal

or celadon & humans assign

meaning to this, saying they are distressed

or full of longing. The wood rat

makes a nest of H’s; it hoards

the seven tiny silences. Crows in the pine

can count specific faces like writers

who feel their art has been ignored.

My father spent his life thinking

about money though he knew

it causes most of this stupid violence,

& he thought of me as a sensible person;

you have the chemical for sensible, he said.

There was no tragedy between us,

unlike how poor Joyce wrote

that his daughter turned away

from that battered cabman’s face, the world.

i didn’t turn away because i don’t know

where it is, it is all over, & when it seems

pure nothingness has come to pass,

i know another animal prepares itself

nationless, not sensible;

thinking of it helps a little bit—

Extra Hidden Life, among the Days

Sometimes , when i’m

very tired , i think

of extremophiles , chemolithoautotrophs

& others with power for changing

not-life into lives , of those that eat rock

& fire in volcanoes , before the death

of the world but after the death of a human

, of their taste

for ammonia or iron , sulfur & carbon

, somehow