("Where did the words go?...")

LAPPLAND: AMMARNAS

Stones in the snow-stream.

See how the light sifts through them.

Dip your hands into the water!

It is as cold as the inside of a stone.

And inside the stone

the world is beginning again:

ice-blue and fearless.

The whole sky

flattens the land

with one gesture-

lichen inches across the rocks.

Then across the red grass

the reeds quivered-

clouds over the lake,

horses stepping

out of twisted birches.

High plateau

where the tethered horses

graze. A dark wind

flickering through the brush.

Our hands, cold around bread.

And the solitary bird

in the scrub grass,

calling its one note,

neither welcome nor alarm.

TWO POEMS

For my father

A rock cleaved open. Inside the rock,

more rock. And an untouchable darkness.

No shadows, no delineations.

A refusal of content.

Only a logic-black, unquizzical.

As sure of itself as an exclamation point.

It needed neither air nor light.

It simply was.

And it didn't have to announce itself.

Everyone recognized it.

So no one moved or tried to shape a word.

Words with their longing for warmth... .

We sat still, listening to the soundlessness.

Trying to get used to it.

To find a name for it.