Poetry

 A man I know hews space

from trees. Hauls himself up there, days,

Late May, 1754: George Washington watches
as one of his confederates, the Iroquois warrior
Half-King, reaches down to the corpse
of a freshly slain French ensign,

Where there were only dirt and needles,
I laid a floor of hardwood and shellac.
I plaited walls into the forest.

Last century we took a lot of shots
Of what we did, framing things for Look and Life
So we could see us and our lot

Once he looked deep in her muddy brown eyes
and saw nothing there but the whirling flies.

We tell the story every year—
how we peered from the windows, shades drawn—
though nothing really happened,
the charred grass now green again.

Landscape was never a subject matter, it was a technique, 
A method of measure, 
                                a scaffold for structuring. 
I stole its silences, I stepped to its hue and cry. 

Being born at all amounts to peering out from a cliff
Over the sea. The great jellyfish who spread their arms
Out on the sea tell us how deep our ignorance is.

The pigeon on the window ledge
beat its wings against the glass.
The student in the narrow street

I can’t imagine breaking up with you.
Instead, I think about the neighbors’ problems:
His anguished look seems punishment for truth;
his “other half” is thin and Puerto Rican.