We do not grow the basis of our wealth by faith alone.
         We enter what's inside, hoping there to find
days like cairns in ordered rows that somehow,
         out of grace, mark a path towards a lifted curse
but the rot of either-or will find the core:
         once, a boy, your flailing arms flung into a giggle,
you mined the branches of an apple tree
         your father's house looked down upon,
and the sun — the hard, taut push of it —
         where you stood, it touched your hand:
and the moment — the sweet, strong juice of it,
         when you at last bit down — smelled bad.
For all the happy accidents, the climate of our youth
         isn’t home; even the hardest of memory’s iron,
the treasures of its dank and teeming groves,
         the fields full of blooming, mating grain
and happiness, ripe to stifle the sighs of years
         long hence: all will rust like a man who,
hot with effort, worn by a day's hard traveling
         scans dark woods. Flares of houses hide among
the hills. The wanderer takes off his heavy coat
         and feels the wind’s knife lightly touch his throat.

At the lighting of the candles of first advent
       you are on your way to meet the rooms
warmed up by your childhood and to greet
       the new-born execution of your birth.
Every year the same old scenes are visited.
       Each wayside, batch and tuft of grass demands
a dividend from your remaining shares.
       Every year the issue is sparser than the fence
fallen on the vacant building lots; porch-lamps
       fade a little sooner. Nettle fields are thinner,
salmon rises lazier. Value comes from tithes
       of candles every Sunday on our graves
a hoard we’ll not inherit, for all will be consumed
       filling up the emptiness our size.

To refuse the course of desire you were given
untangle from their staves the measured hands
of the weavers of exceptional commands;
to resist the metrics of the ancient engineers
disrobe the manners of the righteous brers
and the offices of prelates left behind.
Then the claims of will can be detected,
determined and excised, evading by deception
civil arts: the commonness of politics,
the economic breeds, the farmer’s familial
seasons of beet. If successful, please remain
alien to norms. Give up salt and sugar
and the peppered meat. Shun the finely offered
but thrice perfidious treats. Begin without,
or within, it matters not to execution,
yet live with no recourse to expectation,
renouncing all enticement, everything that’s due;
all this to be a hunger, unnavigable and brined:
directions without appetite, a joy abandoned
to a birthless lore — live, so as to never stand
with either god, not the shining one aloft
or the dark other below, and thereby be witness
to the incalculable extinction of love:
step down, idol, from your pedestal, and walk.
It is beyond order and chaos you must go.

Nothing turns to face us where we are.
Streams, meadows, everything apparent,
the viscous leaves of Autumn, fire-fallow Spring,
it all occurs as if for us to witness,
then burns to embers, no one left to prove it,
the glow of distant stars that sail the void.

No steed consents to ride across that open.
A lark’s song is slowly smothered out.
The mute forest wall is sad and dumb,
a mole’s path, trembling under branches.
What kind of Troy might you establish there?
What laws and tablets wrought for us to praise?

What’s seen alone is understood alone;
conditions of perception aren’t perceived.
That’s why you are, Creator, unattainable,
and all we’re left with are the tasks at hand:
to clear the snow, to sow, to feed, to harvest:
to live all winter long, and thank the summer.

For us, a space, bounded by what’s playable,
defines the width and breadth of childhood,
its paths, which, though retraceable,

nevertheless are never retractable,
like wings on an animated warplane,
a sheath for tempering juvenile rage.

Let’s place the toy into its proper setting.
To the north and west, unknown yards
beyond impassable roads. To the south,

a lake, and along its eastern strand
a park’s edge becomes a no-man’s land.
Within these borders, all worlds existed.

Beyond these walls, no self persisted.
Teach us now to navigate these haunted airs
by drawing lines escaping at the speed of cares.

A message has been sent from far away.
It shall find you as surely as day rises.
It will only need to cross the heavy waters.
It will only need some wind to gather speed.

A letter is on route from lands unknown:
your package is about to be delivered.
In the past, a friend is thinking of you fondly.
In the future, an enemy has come upon your name.

But your transaction is still pending approval.
The seagulls are still soaring on the winds.
Your moment is about to be delivered.
The waves are aloft with signal wings.

More than fond fiction or the great long thoughts
I love the human face and voice at play
the strong whine of laughter, the yawps of praise
the soft and lively turns of friendly phrase
which let me know from far across a room
which one of my dear loves is banging whom,
and though it brings me none of glory’s wreaths
or wisdom’s banners to my castle’s gates
I’ll spend my mortal days with worthless bros
who’ll not be feted by yon nations’ braves
or by a scholar’s fawning dissertations
when they are snug and comfy in their graves.