{"id":5286,"date":"2015-08-27T19:03:59","date_gmt":"2015-08-27T19:03:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregglory.com\/wordpress\/?p=5286"},"modified":"2023-07-08T10:19:42","modified_gmt":"2023-07-08T10:19:42","slug":"the-timid-leaper-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/posts\/the-timid-leaper-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The Timid Leaper"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"timid-leaper-thumbnail\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Purchase from Amazon<\/a><\/p>\n


\n“Tiou, tiou, tiou, tiou- Spe, tiou, squa- tio, tio, tio, tio, tio, tio, tio, tix- Coutio, coutio, coutio, coutio- Squo, squo, squo, squo- Tzu, tzu, tzu, tzu, tzu, tzu, tzu, tzu, tzi- Corror, tiou, squa, pipiqui- Zozozozozozozozozozo-zozo, zirrhading- Tsissisi, tsissisisisisisisis- Dzoree, dzoree, dzoree, tzatu, dzi- Dlo, dlo, dlo, dio, dlo, dlo, dlo, dlo, dlo- Quio, trrrrrrrrrrr- Lu, lu, lu, lu, ly, ly, ly, ly, lie, lie, lie, lie- Quido didl h lulyfie- Hagurr, gurr, quipio- Coui, coui, coui, couri, qui, qui, qui, gai, gui, gui, gui- Goll, goll, goll, goll guia hadadoi- Conigui, horr, ha dia diadill si- Hezezezezezezezezezezezezezezezeze couar ho dze hoi- Quia, quia, quia, quia, quia, quia, quia, quia, ti Ki, ki, ki, io, io, io, ioioioio ki- Lu ly h le lai la leu lo, didl io, quia- Kigaigaigaigaigaigaigai guiagaigaigai couior dzio dzio pi.”
\n~~transcription of a Nightingale’s song made by a French Composer<\/em>
\n<\/P>


\nGregg Glory
\n<\/P>


\nPublished by BLAST PRESS
\n<\/P><\/p>\n

\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
The Night Orchard<\/h2>\n
Petal falling followed falling petal\r\nTill all apple trees held was sky above;\r\nSuch a burst of sweetness discharged from air\r\nPut mind out of reckoning for its cares.\r\nWe walked laughing through the snowing grove\r\nWhirling the fallen in splashes back up,\r\nWidening soft confusions in our wake,\r\nChapleted in blossoms that all spring throve,\r\nLike trees ourselves glowing with tree-petals.--\r\nEarth and air to a fantastic whiteness blown,\r\nShining as puddles from yesterday's shower.\r\nYet trees, for all their loss, did not look to be sad.\r\nTo rely on having is to be had.\r\nNew leaves yattering new green to new leaves\r\nTalked for all the world about the breeze,\r\nAs if blossoms had kept them quieted as snow\r\nAnd, having shaken off their winter calm to play,\r\nThey did not know what to say or know\r\nAnd so said everything in a single day.\r\nEvening found them standing solemn with the stars\r\nThinking how little they were themselves\r\nBeneath bright things hung up so far.\r\nStarlight cast down starlight like sky decayed.\r\nAll the night orchard stood restored to blaze\r\nAs if no single petal of them all\r\nHad suffered earthward a single fall.\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
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The Wind Trees Keep<\/h2>\n
\r\nTrees that have it in them to be a wood\r\nGather dark thoughts where bare hilltop stood.\r\nBranch to branch entreats, and root goes out to root\r\nEntangling dirt with movement deliberate\r\nAs worms, and mix their living sinews\r\nWith cold dead earth, its coldness to renew\r\nAnd above the burning hilltop bring\r\nA shadowy wing never alighting.\r\nStarless night hovers where noon once reigned\r\nAnd exiles grass, and laughing feet detains\r\nWith extricating minuets of wait\r\nAnd then pass on,-- a guardless garden gate\r\nForever shuddering in the wind trees keep,\r\nMurmuring night-long while the world's asleep.\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
The Black Pony<\/h2>\n
\r\nA pony came whose coat was black as pitch,\r\nWhose blood was broody as water in a ditch.\r\nHer eyes were saucers of red command,\r\nHer teeth grew square on the taste of hands.\r\nWildflowers grew more wild at her passing scent;\r\nLike nerves through skin she raced where she went.\r\nThere was more than strangeness in what made her so.\r\nThere was more of night in her hooves than men know.\r\nProud, unobeying breed of tameless hills,\r\nStorm of strength with a godless guideless will.\r\nWhat light burned behind her being may \r\nNot have been heaven sent, but burned to stay.\r\nAn inner star served as her only lamp:\r\nNone took her, none kept her, none triumphed. \r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
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The Old Quarry<\/h2>\n
\r\nThe old quarry's flooded echo came back\r\nTo him almost exact, but left a blunted blank\r\nFor song, a lack of deadened cold echo\r\nIn so much dank; the quarry air was too\r\nSoft and queer to sough a song out right,--\r\nYet still the listening stone, it seemed, white, uptilted,\r\nKnew that song might be meant, to judge by crevice\r\nAnd shadowed device and looks that meant no peace\r\nNor gave advice beyond the dusty tans\r\nRained down on singing man. One saw then,\r\nThe quarry was all quivered walls and rocks\r\nA mocking water swallowed at the bottom.\r\nIt resembled nothing so much as a tomb.\r\nMan's voice rolled all against the abandoned lot,\r\nEchoing himself his repeated tune again\r\nLike nothing else in nature that to voice pretends;\r\nHe was his own superior echo then\r\nWhile song pursued its end as if never begun,\r\nAnd time dilated some in jarring after-echo,\r\nOr made itself felt as one,-- as dark burns on in coal\r\nWhile fire unfolds fire. Here, some soft after-noise\r\n(As in the mare the moaning foal) made some alloy,\r\nForging voice and form alive in the willful quarry\r\nTo totter and rejoice alone where dead water stayed,\r\n-A second singing voice came from bland clay,\r\nAnd was heard some way. It seemed, for once,\r\nThe offence of voice had persuaded voice\r\nTo once not stay remanded in veined marble\r\nBut grace half-garbled, but half-audible,\r\nThe silent singer's startled ear, and speak\r\nSome talk of the theme he'd followed half-awake\r\nInto the choked dark of the watery quarry.\r\nWhat he caught of what came back made him wary.\r\n\"I won't be sorry. I won't, I won't--\"\r\nHe straightened up half-sighing, as if he'd meant\r\nNever to hear his own want in song he'd given\r\nAll his graven morning to, and that, if spent above,\r\nWould have vanished less riven into eve\r\nThan the grave day that the quarry gave.\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
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Two-Edged Liberty<\/h2>\n
\r\nLiberty has two edges still,\r\nOne to keep free, one to kill.\r\n\r\n \r\n<\/pre>\n
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Strokes<\/h2>\n
\r\nClear-headed time at a touch\r\nShows all too much.\r\n\r\nThe resentful body grows old;\r\nYouth and strength have gone\r\nDisgraced from the stage.\r\nVague as a notion,\r\nThe room swims into view;\r\nDawn stutters into motion.\r\n\r\nTime has done to you\r\nThings time shouldn't do.\r\n\r\nAn old man stares out\r\nFrom an oval steel mirror,\r\nYour face in one clout\r\nThe face of a stranger:\r\nCataract-eyed, his blind\r\nGrip gone round a razor.\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
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The Thrush at the Sill<\/h2>\n
\r\nBright beyond belief the morning sun\r\nPresents a double blazing image\r\nAbove the sink, bewitching just enough of dawn\r\nFor me to throw both windows back in homage.\r\nI went forgetful about my round of chores,\r\nTouching openness neither less nor more\r\nThan I was bid by my round of chores.\r\n\r\nSunset had sun exit as it had come,\r\nIn doubled glory. A thrush burst out at once\r\nLoudly loud, as if woods and house were one\r\nAnd eaves leaves.-- And thank, yes, forever thank\r\nSuch song for how it came and its coming in\r\nTo wake indoor woods beside my sink.\r\nThank thrush for landing home in homing in.\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
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A Late Milking<\/h2>\n
\r\nThe upper pasture gate creaked padlocked.\r\nA wading lantern to show the latch\r\nFlared where invisible things attach,\r\nCarrying light snatched up for open use\r\nTo home a tricky key and save a curse.\r\nTo burn out opposing night and burn day back,\r\nAnd give dark description where words must lack,\r\nLight's concern was kept narrow as the lock.\r\n\r\nAt a click, light soon waded on to earthy dark,--\r\nSwung wondering in a guideless hand\r\nFamiliar with the black of pasture lands;\r\nSudden cow or knoll indifferently stood stark.\r\nI followed from below as I was, restless\r\nTo see how aimless light in darkness does. \r\n \r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
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The Broken Boxcar<\/h2>\n
\r\nAt an unsteering speed of stoppage,\r\nDetourned from straight tracks and wages\r\nInto a listless field gone over \r\nMostly to pale thick-blossomed clover,\r\nA boxcar keeps still its steel rails\r\nGoing both ends nowhere in parallel.\r\nAt the blackness of the door\r\nA bandit gathers gold once more,\r\nPulling yellow raspberries\r\nFrom some single spray above the weeds,\r\nReaching the rarewire richness\r\nWith nimble hands and quickness,\r\nPalming sunset tears from thorns;\r\nThe racoon drinks them one by one.\r\nNothing comes to the rusted hitch\r\nClawing air above a gopher ditch,\r\nNo iron hand arrives to steer\r\nAnd with knuckled coupling make a pair,\r\nTo clasp its open mate from the clearing\r\nInto a sky of tear-streaked stars\r\nWhere time would hoist a husky boxcar\r\nFrom its slatted stall and decay\r\nTo paradise, all the way.\r\n\r\nYet in the eye of a ruffed robin,\r\nOn her hopeful nestful throned within\r\nWhere the red roof caves in\r\nFrom leakage and mineral rain,\r\nGlints a hint of levitation--\r\nIn her high eye alone it seems\r\nA flying boxcar bursts with wings\r\nLike eyelashes; below it, everything\r\nLies amiably disordered,\r\nEarthbound and solemnly sordid,\r\nWhile heavenly visitors to her nest\r\nFeed her safe chicks, and she rests.\r\nSo much of vision came to eye, and awed.\r\nA unpersuaded caw cawed\r\nFrom the litter of the field\r\nThe hunching crow refused to yield,\r\nA black bold spot that picked for trash\r\nIn weeds gone bright to whiteness.\r\nNow only time, for what it's worth\r\nFlying still on its changeful path,\r\nTurns the structure in its soft clutch\r\nLike a moody sleeper back to earth.\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
Lakeside Sketch<\/h2>\n
\r\nWhere a single steeple keeps the sky\r\nAnd a scribbled wet of charcoal darks\r\nLaps lapsing to meet the day,\r\n--Crosshatched by wind's artistic lark,--\r\nMonday quiet's come, as quiet may\r\nUpon one meditation-taken;\r\nAfter-silence serves some way\r\nFor all the echo left the lake.\r\n\r\nThe boathouse goes down to dock\r\nOn knees of battered pilings.\r\nSuppliant to greet common rock,\r\nThe dock goes flat as filings.\r\nAstute, the musing rock\r\nLets the mirror water watch\r\nWhat it has mind enough to mock:--\r\nSearchers who seek a latch.\r\n\r\nThere is no back or access side\r\nTo such a thing that is all is;\r\nAnd if you say inside,\r\nAnd take inside out to see what 'tis,\r\nI'll say, 'tis better far to glide\r\nWhatever offered surfaces\r\nAnd decode what pleasure there resides\r\nIn such interstices\r\n\r\nThan creep through dark, however wide\r\nThe open crosshatch seems or is,\r\nTo pull apart, to peer at tides\r\nWhose motives are their business,--\r\nAnd trouble them enough alive\r\nTo wash our prayers with their sighs.\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
Something Like<\/h2>\n
\r\nI longed for something something like too long.\r\nMy ablest eyes had two ears of seems--\r\nEach tree I heard, I heard shake some human song;\r\nTwo eyes never looked but I saw two stars along,\r\nNo weather raved but trailed some inner storm.\r\nMy analogizing mind knew but what it deemed.\r\nNothing brought what it had meant to bring,\r\nNo shape manifest but in related form.\r\nOf what I'd been gifted I got nothing, no thing.\r\nAlone in life's simulacrum I saw or heard\r\nLess than one third of every third's third.\r\nAll my blessings blessed transformed.\r\nReady at last to be, no matter being's marr,\r\nI'm satisfied with sighing is and are.\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
Something Put<\/h2>\n
\r\nLike the flower near at hand I grow\r\nUpwards by light into all I know;\r\nBuried in ignorant dirt by a downward thumb\r\nI bend dumb beneath rain into what may come.\r\nLike a flower in summer now I grow tall,\r\nConcentrate a seed out of all I've been,\r\nPut half my something into that seed to fall,\r\nDrop it unseen on wide ground, and then\r\nName that something put my all.\r\nIs that something put experience gathered in?\r\nOr is ignorance all when any all begins?\r\nMy ignorance decides me-- I cannot tell\r\nWhat seed, in growing there, may yet become\r\nBesides new ignorance beneath the sun.\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
The Burning Anvil<\/h2>\n
\r\nMy breast is a burning anvil\r\nCannot hammer a likely shoe\r\nStern enough to trace unglued\r\nA racing lifetime through and through.\r\n\r\nMy breast is a burning anvil\r\nFull of causal smokes and coughs,\r\nMore than youth at times had thought,\r\nBetween hammer and anvil caught.\r\n\r\nMy breast is a burning anvil\r\nThat sparks with the loss of heat\r\nWhen edge and edge, hard and hard, compete\r\nTo shape each and each to mate.\r\n\r\nMy breast is a burning anvil\r\nCannot cease to pause or cool,--\r\nAs industrious, dedicate a tool\r\nAs any I'd forgot I forged.\r\n\r\nMy breast is a burning anvil\r\nFull of tragic din and error\r\nAs any beating thing that mirrors\r\nThe hotness of my terror.\r\n\r\nMy breast is a burning anvil\r\nCannot pound out a likely star\r\nAs real as evening's first clear\r\nAt whose clarity I stare.\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
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Timebends<\/h2>\n
\r\nSomething about where the pebbled path in day\r\nSplits, or in evening even trines,\r\nMakes me wonder about the purpose of the way.\r\n\r\nHow many must have used their footsteps just to come,\r\nAnd in coming here pass on in time,\r\nAs if all wheres we go are comparable to when.\r\n\r\nAnd yet, time's a path more linearly ordered,\r\nOne whose steps will not divide,\r\nNo matter at what shady banks or grasses we loiter--\r\n\r\nWe may not, cannot, no matter how tried,\r\nReverse the going flow, or, breaking it, abide.\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
Snaps<\/h2>\n
\r\nHow small a snapshot lies in hand\r\nThat held such grandness in its lens.\r\nA perspective granted only once and when.\r\nWhat we see of what is just depends.\r\n\r\nBounded by a regular white of lack,\r\nI look at the detailed littleness;\r\nA thumb occludes a mountain in the west\r\nLike a painter perhapsing a sketch on scrap.\r\n\r\nSnapped charm of vistas that had turned my head,\r\nDevelops charms of Time new-enlisted\r\nTo re-focus a moment visited.\r\n\r\nOut of the frame winces one of my dead;\r\nI turn the flat for date, and recognize\r\nHow loss and tears consume what's snapped by eyes.\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
Prisms<\/h2>\n
\r\nA spider, web, and alderberry bush\r\nArranged December in a quiet cr\u00e8che;\r\nThe spider's stitching straw was soft and fine\r\nAs anything that ties us to the divine;\r\nAn afternoon of hidden breaths condensed,\r\nStrung with dew as if of dew composed,\r\nA blazing cobweb out of cold mist--\r\nDew-prism looked on prism, all in all,\r\nAnd saw summer's wonder from before the Fall\r\nUntil every thread of light was put out by the loss\r\nOf sun. Twilit dews sparkled into frost.\r\nEach gentle juncture hardened to a cross.\r\nStiff additions of still more strength and grace\r\nTo dropleted water, by increments erased\r\nWeave's living give and left a stony place\r\nTo which the chapel spider was not accustomed.\r\nA rigid web in an alderberry niche,\r\nStill and silver as a collection dish.\r\nFrom her holy central belly it spiraled out,--\r\nA frozen wheel or prayer-mat to invite\r\nChilly fervors of the not-yet devout.\r\nYou couldn't think such religion altruistic,\r\nAnd could only thank it if a mystic\r\nAnd believed all troubled birth a pause\r\nBetween our cyclings back to Cause.\r\nThe spider didn't think it mercy, that's certain.\r\nShe rushed behind her tautened curtain\r\nTo lay a landed fly into her winter stock\r\nAnd knit the praying fly a little silver lock\r\nThat has only a mystic key.\r\nShe sought to bead a new dew to see,\r\nSince day had gone blinded down to night,\r\nAnd one more dark into her web was caught.\r\nBut even a spider with her sticky tricks\r\nCan find occasion to make a slip\r\nOn such transparency gone slick;\r\nThe icy wire and her dainty claw-tip\r\nMet without resistance, though her weight was there,\r\nAnd that gave a tumbled feeling of unfair\r\nAnd brought spider slipping past the fly\r\nWho looked at her with all of his eyes,\r\nGave an inch leap, and was gone.\r\nThe diamond web with ice was diamonded.\r\nThe spider threw a line to save her pride\r\nAnd back toward the frozen center slid.\r\nShe poised unpleased, ready for dark dispatch,--\r\nA philosopher at a damaged treasure-latch,\r\nMeditating what Fate might have brought\r\nIn the richness of the fly near-caught,\r\nAnd then what wealth of blood denied,\r\nThe treasure chest a blank inside.\r\nPerhaps the spider, if she had tried,\r\nMight have persuaded the praying fly\r\nHe'd be in for blessings if he died.\r\n(Too bad he'd already taken off on his\r\nAerodynamic errand or business.)\r\nWheels within wheels and layer upon layer.\r\nDeath would rank him up a rung, \r\nNearer You and I as human beings\r\n-- Or two rungs up. Yes. To convince the buyer,\r\nPersuades more than a hundred prayers,\r\nThought this spider to herself, cool and sly.\r\nBut there was no nimble buzzer skating by\r\nTo heed the sales-pitch of the spider,\r\nSave those flies already saved inside her.\r\nWith eight great eyes and eight great arms,\r\nAnd well-equipped to deal out harm,\r\nShe resumed half-folded her coldly central position\r\nAs ready for Fate as anyone\r\nDefeat had bruised and brought\r\nHungrier for what she had not caught.\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
Iris Vision<\/h2>\n
\r\nIt's been a well-worn\r\nYear since my iris has gone\r\nWhose dark-headed heightened grace\r\nHad tripleted heart's pace\r\nAnd made the threatening waters\r\nIrradiate the lighter\r\nFor her being something darker.\r\nShe brought her blue-black laughter\r\nLike an aftereffect of thunder\r\nWhen lightning rare as wonder\r\nMakes a landscape dark as murder\r\nBy its too-much light, and, lighter,\r\nTouches earth and sky together.\r\nNow the garden, disused and mossed,\r\nGrieves green, and I am lost\r\nAs rain that runs away,\r\nAs a thought that will not stay,\r\nOr childhood song that refuses to play.\r\nMy iris in her wonted place,\r\nSensed through broken mist and lace,\r\nIn tree-shadows lifts her face.--\r\nI see her here returned,\r\nNor may I this wish unlearn\r\nAs long as dew in dawn's-light burns;\r\nEvery shady curl of worth\r\nThat my flower had leased from earth\r\nIn sable richness reappears,\r\nFull of rampant ribbon-shapes,\r\nTaking all of root and stalk\r\nTo reach to light, and, silent, talk.\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
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Unmask Us<\/h2>\n
\r\nI come to stare at leaves as deep as snow,\r\nThat have sent the roots to sea, that know\r\nA restlessness I, restless, know.\r\nI come to stare at leaves as deep as snow.\r\n\r\nI turn the rake, send tines upended\r\nNot to use as I intended\r\nBut to lean and stare as if deep in snow\r\nAnd hear the restless things I know:\r\n\r\nToo many things put aside or shunted\r\nThat had been centered when I started,\r\nToo many things a life must ask us,--\r\nSo quick a quiet moment will unmask us.\r\n\r\nA moment's thought, and all disguise\r\nResolves itself into surprise;\r\nA moment more of wonder, even more,\r\nAnd ignorance the disguise restores.\r\n\r\nLeaves unsheltered by the coming wind\r\nRub the half-bare trees where they began;\r\nThey move as they would there once again\r\nClimb to be leaves returned by wind.\r\n\r\nDeep behind the mask, a whisper knows\r\nThere's an old hole of light to show\r\nJust where we've come, and yet may go,\r\nAmong restless leaves as deep as snow.\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
My conscience is grass<\/h2>\n
\r\nMy conscience is grass surrounding every side\r\nWhispering, whispering. No help, no guide.\r\nWhen I at last lie down, it will lie by my side,\r\nNever saying do or go, but only: be, abide.\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
The Wounded Woodsman<\/h2>\n
\r\nI passed a knoll and passed it every day\r\nAlong the same soft deserted loam\r\nUntil a track as bare as bone\r\nFollowed along my way.\r\n\r\nIt was in its going I saw it first:\r\nNarrow willows in a lovely copse\r\nWhere the wounded woodsman lops\r\nThe last to lay with the first.\r\n\r\nI had not noted the knot of wood,\r\nOr taken the view to do myself good--\r\nAlthough the fresh-cut white of the willow-ends\r\nMade some temporary amends.\r\n\r\n\r\n[Versioned from Edward Thomas' \r\n \"First Known When Lost\"]\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
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Boardwalk Bonfire<\/h2>\n
\r\nBuild the storm-brought wood till its right to burn\r\n--A civilization, an amended word;\r\nCompletion and destruction turn\r\nA dead-end rhyme as mated words.\r\n\r\nThe long matchstick cracks, a broken finger,\r\nA wail to salt the self-subsuming wood;\r\n--As if no injury could make ginger\r\nOur conscience to aid the good.\r\n\r\nI know myself, and play my hand\r\nShadowless in the flame and briny fire\r\nUntil a new pink hurt like stinging sand\r\nBids hand withdraw, and I perspire. \r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
A Summer Prayer<\/h2>\n
\r\nAll our hours vacillate\r\nLike summer clouds gone sliding by\r\nClotted, vein-veiled and late,\r\nFroward or deadly shy\r\nApparitions of the empty,\r\nThe essentially empty sky,\r\nTo dissipate in an hour's downpour.\r\nAll our hours, all our hours.\r\nOur most famous nimbus\r\nAnd more hallowed halo are\r\nOur only blessings, bare and lent\r\nBy God, devil, or doubtful goal\r\nIn dance of dread amusement.\r\nEach day we eat and ache,\r\nSomething dark for its own sake\r\nLaughs at our glittering fate;\r\nWe tend our hours like a wish,\r\nAlone but for some softer guess--\r\nOur heart-happiness uncertain\r\nAs divinity's parted curtain.\r\nWhat remains of marvel here\r\nOf all that drifts to dust\r\nBeneath a sky irremediably clear\r\nIs the irascible particular;\r\nThe him of him, the her of her.\r\n\r\nListen to the wind and to me--\r\nLet lending lend in leniency\r\nAn open, ageless, real reprieve\r\n(In which unsafe hearts may yet believe)\r\nTo all our human tenancy\r\nDefined by that proscenium\r\nUnder which we're born and moan\r\nFull of voice and softness,\r\nFull of whispers and of curses.\r\nWith the individual soul,\r\n--With that and that alone,--\r\nWherever soaring moves above\r\nOr going goes in having went,\r\nBe thou communicant.\r\nAnd this as well I wish and say\r\nTo one and all or the all-in-one:\r\nTouch whatever in touching comes,\r\nAnd, -brave beyond what may be saved\r\nBy what such touching has engraved,--\r\nNever one instant's kissing shun.\r\n \r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
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Chain Chain Chain<\/h2>\n
\r\n[sonnet version]\r\n\r\nOnce upon a time, I had bruised slightly\r\nMy \r\nFing-\r\nErend in ty-\r\nIng\r\nUnneedful knots too brutally. \r\nThe knots were sonnets, rhy-\r\nMing\r\nNot gracefully, \r\nLosing \r\nBout by \r\nBout despite my \r\nCareful tying. \r\nI had not thought writing \r\nWas so much like fighting. \r\nI stay-\r\nEd at it relentlessly \r\nTying tying tying \r\nEvery \r\nMusing, \r\nBruising \r\nblossom stylistically.\r\nThe daisy-\r\nChain was for no one particularly\r\n(Or perhaps I am lying). \r\nYou know how things \r\nGet tangly \r\nWhen we practice firstly.... \r\nThe leng-\r\nThening \r\nString \r\nOf words got too stringy \r\nAnd self-involved in singing\r\nThat should have taken flight more singly \r\nBy \r\nWhistling \r\nUnconcernedly \r\nAnd not too self-consciously.\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
Chain Chain Chain<\/h2>\n
\r\n[sonnet format]\r\n\r\nOnce upon a time, I had bruised slightly\r\nMy fingerend in tying unneedful knots \r\nToo brutally. The knots were sonnets, \r\nRhyming not gracefully, losing bout by bout\r\nDespite my careful tying. I had not \r\nThought writing was so much like fighting. \r\nI stayed at it relentlessly tying tying tying \r\nEvery musing, bruising blossom stylistically.\r\nThe daisy-chain was for no one particularly\r\n(Or perhaps I am lying). You know how things get tangly \r\nWhen we practice firstly.... The lengthening string \r\nOf words got too stringy and self-involved in singing\r\nThat should have taken flight more singly by whistling \r\nUnconcernedly and not too self-consciously. \r\n \r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
Gifts Assembled<\/h2>\n
\r\nIt was summer's atmosphere of doubt,\r\nI said, made me uncertain what I was about;\r\nEarth was warm and sure, I was not.\r\nI made myself feel the closeness of the crypt.\r\nTo be by so much richness troubled\r\nWhen wavery air gave me me myself doubled\r\nIn the very nothingness I breathed and stumbled\r\nWas to curse a wealth of gifts assembled.\r\nI did not have what I had wished;\r\nNothing did as I did insist.\r\nSummer's ripeness came to a million ifs,\r\nI had nothing but summer's million gifts.\r\nAll the lauded grace of giving was Time's;\r\nAll grace crowded close as living rhymes.\r\n \r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
New Wilderness<\/h2>\n
\r\nWho incised this river here by writing hard\r\nForgot to leave with wetted alphabet\r\nThe charm of a cipher. The river rambles on,\r\nUntil caught up by the roots that shade\r\nMy going on in woods, although my coming here\r\nWhere river spells and spills into hard wood\r\nWas open plain enough. And that's another kind\r\nOf hard-to-see from too much looking:\r\nField and sky-- at night, earth-dark and stars--\r\nFlat each to each like paired mirrors with\r\nNothing caught between. So I'd crawled here\r\nMorning long, the weather hugger-mugger nothing\r\nAnd the fields off-rotation for bearing crops,\r\nAnd, so, lively with wildflower wilderness'\r\nPlay-day maybe and beginning mischief\r\nOf sorting out itself without the help of hands.\r\nI thought, once, coming this way years back\r\nOn a similar sort of errandless errand,\r\nI had caught, once, some evidence of pride\r\nRunning through the wild wood gone half-back\r\nFrom cultivation to dark unplowed bewilderment.\r\nI saw a line as straight as a forearm\r\nRun a hundred yards between two equal\r\nTangles of trees-- fair straight-- the way\r\nA stick will write out a line and raise a rim\r\nIn level leaf-mold chewed even by the time.\r\nAll this before a hidden storm the weather folk\r\nHad laid odds against, and, so, I had dismissed.\r\nAnd then a thinnest silver filter fell\r\nAnd brought already damp woods as wet....\r\nAnd I stood in the turn of atmosphere\r\nAs sunset brought a gold to all the air,\r\nInfecting silver with light's last despair,\r\nThe way a fever brightens sickness to a shine\r\nIn eyes and cheeks, and brows grow dewed\r\nWith inner causes. I stood thus and wiped my face,\r\nInterested to see such simple changefulness,\r\nAnd not knowing why I displayed such interest,\r\nNor indeed why I had such interest to gift\r\nTo new wilderness come up since man had left.\r\nBut, slowly, as winter eaves will gather ice,\r\nThis line fallen before my feet, uncrossed,\r\nBecame a trough for an element not itself,\r\nAnd rose cupping changeful water until dark,\r\nAnd past dark, myself become as sodden\r\nAs my coat, my hands gone home to pockets\r\nLike squirrels asleep in leaves,-- until overfull\r\nOf rain and moonlight. The line laid out\r\nA silver bar, shining from end to end\r\nLike some fresh first cuneiform stroke in clay;\r\nYou know how clarity can come on after storm,\r\nNo matter how minor the stirrings warned.\r\nBut I wondered, as I would. I wondered anyway.\r\nWhat had taught the line to be, when clouds\r\nCleared away to re-present the moon to me?\r\nWhat straightness lay here inherited?\r\nNothing came to drink of what had swollen,\r\nA revelation strange as rain that'd left it\r\nTo puzzle one who seeks for things in things\r\nAnd wants to know just what to tell himself,\r\nForgetting weather's made by being out in rain.\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
No Learning<\/h2>\n
\r\nThere is no learning but to yearn and yearn,\r\nAnd by wanting see what we think we are\r\n(Composed of stuff from a farther star).--\r\nDesire deep-in to recklessly burn;\r\nDesire to assemble what all we are\r\nBy partial parts into one whole complete;\r\nTo work out the sum where integers meet\r\nAnd write an answer without a scar,\r\nWithout a stitch where kissing incompletes\r\nTell-out by telltale the nightly labor\r\nUsed to unify our dawning wonder\r\nThat recklessly burns with day's own heat--\r\nUntil our in-dark echo cries for night,\r\nCool and apart, and all away from sight.\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
Down to Clouds<\/h2>\n
\r\nI'd thought life without Love no life at all,\r\nAnd my life like a parachutist's fall\r\nHad readied-up with a silken snarl\r\nAnd without a parachutist's safety-pull.\r\nI was dead-ready to meet the all-in-all;\r\nI had all needed: gravity and a fool.\r\nMy heart never mistrusted God was cruel.\r\n\r\nOn my way down to clouds, through clouds to clods,\r\nI thought how the silk weight on my belly pulled,\r\nHow silk and air stretched tight would make a shroud,\r\nAnd what an act, inordinate and proud,\r\nLiving on would be -just as if allowed--\r\nBefore the cruel throne and crowded face of God,\r\nMy life one long fall as if dead and mourned.\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
By Shadow Known<\/h2>\n
\r\nI did not know how clouds could crowd\r\nThe weathered Earth by blowing round,\r\nOr drop deep shadows by their light,\r\nToo much lightness in sun's too much light.\r\n\r\n'Til one day their dark put me dark--\r\nCrowded me out by high-shadowed marks\r\nFrom old communion with the sun;\r\nDaily now my darkness comes.\r\n\r\nI, who had been a burning cloud,\r\nNow in noon-night perform my rounds.\r\nWere I to shred their silver dark,\r\nNew light would blind by being stark. \r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
Where<\/h2>\n
\r\nThe wandering mind that wanders far and late\r\nAnd wanders where from causal clouds the lightning breaks\r\nAnd rivers thunder from blank riven air\r\nUnhouseled by light. The mind is there.\r\n\r\nDeep and deeplier, into the most low lightless grotto\r\nThe mind pursues its darkness unaware\r\nOf how it does increase the dark it brings and bares\r\nWhere still the shark sleeps. The mind is there.\r\n\r\nOut beyond this room, beyond the moon, beyond, beyond,\r\nBehind the seeping dark that inhearses every darting star,\r\nBeyond pale planets, back beyond where shooken concepts jar\r\nAnd Time is dead. The mind is there.\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
Pastoral<\/h2>\n
\r\nA snake\r\nTakes\r\nThe yard and\r\nGarden,\r\n\r\nSways\r\nAs haze \r\nDoes;\r\n\r\nBuzz\r\nOf bees\r\nIn leaves\r\nInsist\r\n\r\nHe list\r\nAnd cease\r\nHis\r\n\r\nHiss.\r\nThey sing\r\nOf Spring,\r\nThe beautiful, \r\n\r\nMutable\r\nAnd mutual\r\nGoal\r\n\r\nBeing\r\nIs bringing\r\nTo yard and\r\nGarden.\r\n\r\nThe snake\r\nTakes\r\nThe song--\r\n\r\nGone\r\nAs one \r\nFlash\r\n\r\nThrough slashing\r\nStale grass;\r\n\r\nReturns\r\nWith burn\r\nSounds\r\n\r\nRound\r\nThe garden\r\nFountain\r\nCurl-\r\n\r\nS asleep and full.\r\n \r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
Walk in the Hush<\/h2>\n
\r\nThe wind that tenses in the hollow\r\nAnd re-weaves what grass I kick,\r\nGoes over my length for pillow,\r\nWeary of crags and dirt.\r\n\r\nAs I approach a higher place,\r\nBarren and brown, the dust\r\nWind-blown into my onward face\r\nFingers my eyes and hurts.\r\n\r\nI less and less the height approach\r\nThat further and further\r\nRecedes; all that I now closer touch\r\nIs the push of Other.\r\n\r\nWhy has wind come, why a stranger,\r\nSo close and harsh to me,\r\nWho has no wish, no wish, to linger,\r\nHeld by what he cannot see.\r\n\r\nWhen over the lapsing hilltop's crest\r\nAt last came sudden rest,--\r\nI knew not who I was in the hush\r\nWhen no gust pressed. \r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
To What<\/h2>\n
\r\nWas it sudden ease, or the sudden cost,\r\nThat made us most feel we were not all lost,\r\nThat step and step had still some place to go,\r\nThat all the world wasn't but wilderment of snow?\r\n\r\nFor my part, I did not gauge the cost\r\n(Or rounded figures down at worst or most).\r\nI had no interest in what interest others took.\r\nFor my sole self my dual eyes do look.\r\n\r\nI see the thing itself as it appears to be,\r\nVisible from somewhere on vague reprieve;\r\nThen I look where eyes look eyes-closed\r\nAnd seem to hunt up a memory of shape at most\r\n\r\nThat rises toward some overwhelming feeling,\r\nRising, rising, as all else fades out failing--\r\nRising to what I always call my meaning.\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
Falsifying Fire<\/h2>\n
\r\nOur sullen retreat into the ever-there,\r\nOur reliance on the invisible\r\nOr recourse to given revelation,\r\nBrightens my minute's thought to crucible\r\nAnd pulls some lasting gold from my flame's care,\r\nAs if we knew our wishing and the wish were one.\r\nWhat do we need of what seems infinite?\r\nThe partial glare of being here, just here,\r\nIs enough of heaven to round our minute\r\nAnd puts a light, however lone and bare\r\nWe cry for things more determinate,\r\nInto all we seem to see and share.\r\nI will not falsify my fire, but answer all and one:\r\nNo answer yet but becoming to become. \r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
Assembling the Earth<\/h2>\n
\r\nLook with me at what we call,\r\nSubstantial or ephemeral,\r\nAll of Earth, where we must end,\r\nAnd all of sky's over-awning All:\r\nSense the sub-stratum and the theme\r\nDawning out of sincerer dream.\r\nNote how dark must always end,\r\nHow Earth's quickened sharps of light\r\nCoalesce by pixels until we see\r\nLightly lightninged twig-ends,\r\nDew-draped, shiver and invite\r\nGreater light, or light's dark reverse\r\nThe odor of more crowded trees\r\nBlends with the musk of night.\r\nI sort my knowledge into verbs:\r\nI did, I can, I do, I can't.\r\nAnd other more what-ifs I list:\r\nI shall, I wish, I shan't, I want.\r\nAnd a thousand thousand others \r\nUnvoiced, unheard.\r\n\r\nAll that puts a soul at ease\r\nEnough to stammer and confess\r\nThe inconvenient, the gulped absurd,\r\nOr to think a something mystic\r\nRather too simplistic,\r\nBrings the daunting Earth to words,\r\nAnd helps to carry, as you guess,\r\nOur everything to is.\r\n\r\nI kept a million themes beside my bed\r\nIn a rosewood box with a turtle,\r\nWith one working tin hinge beside\r\nThe turtle decaled spread-eagled;\r\nI left the springed hinge untried,\r\nAnd added blanks to the map\r\nOn the warm rosewood back \r\nOf the rose-boned wooden turtle.\r\nIt was better, or so I deemed,\r\nTo live unknowing and to dream\r\nThan know every meaning's means.\r\nI kept the box beside me a thousand days,\r\nAn indian symbol of the Earth,\r\nUnopened save as a question may\r\nDiscover unbidden worth,\r\nThe way a kiss becomes a question,\r\nA new-burned feeling without borders,\r\nA meeting, this meeting, --here,--\r\nSolemnly together without a seam\r\nIn loving and in waking dream\r\n\r\nA part or portion \r\nOf the natural order,\r\nOpening and answerless,\r\nIn a realness of air.\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
The Wild Hunt<\/h2>\n
\r\nA reindeer head and human breast\r\nProve hunger no mere beast\r\nBut a yearning, foreign fire all, great\r\nTo least, carry to life's living feast.\r\nTarry constellations stoop to whisper\r\nIn ears sharp as fine feathers on a shaft\r\nWhat makes the unbrave whimper\r\nAnd holds the brave man fast:\r\n\r\nUndulant hills are too lonely\r\nTo have what raves in every heart--\r\nToo unready to live solely\r\nAnd nurture the dark feast that lasts.\r\nEat my starry heart, my body and my brain!\r\nNothing in Nature's self-renewing fast\r\nCan feed what hungering thought may gain\r\nFrom imagination's last and least.\r\n\r\nWith a light, clipped clop\r\nDunning into bright bell the dull rock,\r\nThe man with reindeer-headed top\r\nHunts the night, nor heeds the cock\r\nRawing dawn into existence,\r\nThe one near star whose agony stoops\r\nTo burn us hungry out of inward pense\r\nWith overwhelming wilderness for crop.\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
The Timid Leaper<\/h2>\n
\r\nWhere an ArrowLine desert bus\r\nCame exhausted to a standstill,\r\nAnd made small swirls in the greater dust,\r\nA long-eared hare on a hill\r\nListened to the engine's cooling clatter,\r\nSaw pasty faces at grimy sills\r\nLook out at what was the matter.\r\n\r\nWith fingerfine lips, from a cactus,\r\nA stolen blossom became the hare\r\nIn the open purview of the bus, \r\nOne-sided with a crowd of stares.\r\nAlmost the timid leaper started,--\r\nTaken by a kisser's shyness\r\nTo see so many lips half-parted.\r\n\r\nStilly as a waiting blossom does,\r\nThe hare attended the airy all\r\nThat sighed a quiet from the bus\r\n(Attentive now as if stalled),\r\nThe arrow mastered enough to wait\r\nFor what the desert deemed or willed.\r\nAt unbidden wind, from dead-still \r\nInto dead dust\r\n                       the leaper leapt.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
Interrupted Night<\/h2>\n
\r\nTwo eyes followed me out of sleep and dream.\r\nI could not dream what seeing things could mean.\r\nI had deemed all an oblivion unabated,\r\nA sordid compost of all I loved or hated.\r\nSuch was all, and all I knew of what\r\nDreaming sleep to wakeful reason brought.\r\nBut now these howling eyes unsocketed by pain,\r\nThat did not bear any look of ease or rest,\r\nStared green indelible thoughts into my brain\r\nAnd came, unofficed officers, to my arrest.\r\nThe sheets I turned in, on me had turned,\r\nAs if in skins and grave-shrouds I had been wound--\r\nMy blinded body moved unmoored beyond my sight\r\nAnd turned to return to dream in interrupted night.\r\n\r\n \r\n<\/pre>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
No Effigy<\/h2>\n
\r\nA tree must burn to be.\r\nWhen summer's fellow ardor\r\nComes, they sway up, the trees,\r\nThe way that flame and flame\r\nCombine in a making game\r\nWhen what they are is brought too near,\r\nAnd are pulled apart by wind\r\nPlayfully alone again.\r\nA large sweet-smelling cedar\r\nHeld itself all summer\r\nAs constant-shaped as flame,\r\nWith a slow, slow burning sound\r\nOf leaves, and the settling tick\r\nOf branch that knocks on branch.\r\nWhere the woods blaze thickest\r\nThere comes a woodsey whoosh\r\nThat undoes my breath;\r\nAll the leaves alloyed sun-molten.\r\nThe fall will show them golden.\r\nWhat have trees but trees\r\nTo prove that inside fire might be?\r\nTrees have no effigy to burn.\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
finis<\/h2>\n
\nThis quick collection saved my life.<\/p>\n
June 29th - July 28th 2001<\/p>\n
<\/PRE><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Purchase from Amazon “Tiou, tiou, tiou, tiou- Spe, tiou, squa- tio, tio, tio, tio, tio, tio, tio, tix- Coutio, coutio, coutio, coutio- Squo, squo, squo, squo- Tzu, tzu, tzu, tzu, tzu, tzu, tzu, tzu, tzi- Corror, tiou, squa, pipiqui- Zozozozozozozozozozo-zozo, zirrhading- Tsissisi, tsissisisisisisisis- Dzoree, dzoree, dzoree, tzatu, dzi- Dlo, dlo, dlo, dio, dlo, dlo, dlo, […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001002,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[680],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-timid-leaper","category-680-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001002"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5286"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5286\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7400,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5286\/revisions\/7400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}