Works & Loves

Rain fell as a glass

breaks,

something suddenly everywhere at the same time.

To live like a painting

looked into from more than one angle at once —

eye to eye with the doorway,

down at the hair,

up at your own dusty feet.

“This is your house,”

said my bird heart to my heart of the cricket,

and I entered.

The happy see only happiness,

the living see only life,

the young see only the young,

as lovers believe

they wake always beside one also in love.

However often I turned its pages,

I kept ending up

as the same two sentences of the book:

The being of some is: to be. Of others: to be without.

Then I fell back asleep, in Swedish.

A sheep grazing is unimpressed by the mountain

but not by its flies.

The grief

of what hasn’t yet happened —

a door closed from inside.

The weight of the grass

dividing

an ant’s five-legged silence

walking through it.

What is the towel, what is the water,

changes,

though of we three,

only the towel can be held upside down in the sun.

“I was once.”

Said not in self-pity or praise.

This dignity we allow barn owl,

ego, oyster.