Roots and rocks emerge from the forest path like half-
      spoken thoughts,
or as Thoreau would put it, the earth is saying “rock.” And

 Like God, I get up early, walk out in the cool of the day
to see my handiwork. Oh, Nathaniel, thou hast not done well!
I'll post a sign: Henry Thoreau, poet and pencil-maker,

I agree, O heart, that my poetry is not easy to take in.
When they hear my work, experienced poets
Suggest I should write something easier to understand.

The world I see looks to me like a game of children.
Strange performances and plays go on night and day.
King Solomon’s throne is not a big thing to me.

For the raindrop, joy is in entering the river—
Unbearable pain becomes its own cure.

Travel far enough into sorrow, tears turn to sighing;

I came out of what was not my mother.
When my eyes cracked in the light,
and I looked up, it was at a germ-lamp,

You bring the Red Devil back fast,
left wrist whirling in the circle
as the line fills the spool—

but no one is always on your side
not even a poet

As my wife buys our daughter her first bra
I wait beside the escalator
with our packages from Sears and J.C. Penney’s,

The sound of women hidden
among the lemon trees. A sweetness
that can live with the mind, a familiarity