They see the hand of John the Baptist, kept,
a bit of sallow skin and withered flesh,

We wondered, Have we already been punched
into this world’s time clock often enough
to earn the preservation of a family tree

“Even stone rots,” stone seems to say

They are not hard to get to know:
6 and 9 keep changing their minds,
8 cuts the most graceful figure
but sleeps for an eternity,

I’m the one who corrects the blurred
bodies, those grown uneven,
out of focus with

The gardeners gazing through their open shears
Or staring sightless from their wooden ladders
Stand helpless by and dream they cannot lower

Poetry’s “impulse, like electricity, crossing the space, leaves its signature.”
            —W. S. Graham

No wonder that a flash of sparks
Spills out from what I touch—the LaserJet,

Brimming with static shock,
Suspends invisible electron-clouds

Across the laser-paper’s Radiant White
To print “The Windhover”

Electrostatically—
Hopkins’ creation-poem, spelled out

There is a resonance in stone. 
Just put your ear against the grave of one 
You hated because love was difficult to bear.

This is not the place to
 discuss the rain forests
  of Paraguay, or their

Realism means being there, not living some abstract 
life tied up in equity against the possibility of 
tomorrow, all the things we were taught to conserve.