Three Words

if today I choose to put an end to

all but three words, I will keep dream

because the only people I’m ever with are in

my dreams — we are busy beavers with real lives

we talk & touch each other in our dreaming world

& I will keep children, plural, so they can be together

afraid & unafraid, because they still have a chance

if the world decides to keep them, & the third word

I've yet to choose, though in thinking about it

I’m ending ever so many words, for example, hero

& good & bad & order & law & before & after & pain

oh, there it is, I found it, the third word is river

because so much must exist for there to be rivers

& rivers run

 

Arisaema triphyllum, jack-in-the-pulpit

Rainbow Falls hike

2 hours 35 minutes, 4.05 miles 

trailhead in Gorges State Park, trail continues into Nantahala State Forest

click for pix

Coontree Loop / Bennet Gap hike

2 hours 30 minutes, 4.05 miles

click for pix

Cat Gap / Butter Gap hike

2 hours 53 minutes, 3.96 miles

Cedar Rock Falls, Upper Cedar Rock Falls, & Grogan Falls

click for pix

Bracken Preserve hike

1 hour 30 minutes, 2.42 miles 

click for pix

Sycamore Cove / Grassy Road hike

3 hours, 5.3 miles

click for pix

A Wind & a World

scratching wakes me, must be

the cat, yet strange space looms

it’s the back door open, it’s dark space

our house open to the rest of the night

I’m standing now, my heart all thumps

I step into pants, wrestle a shirt, walk

to the threshold, why’s the door open?

is someone here? has the cat escaped?

I find a light, the sleepy puzzled cat

studies me from the hall, she sees

more than I do, if a stranger came here

she’d wake before me, she’d run & hide

daily she begs to go out in the real world

I tell her no, it’s not safe, yet tonight

while I sleep, keen to be with us

a wind & a world push their way inside

Hymn

by A R Ammons

I know if I find you I will have to leave the earth

and go on out

    over the sea marshes and the brant in bays

and over the hills of tall hickory

and over the crater lakes and canyons

and on up through the spheres of diminishing air

past the blackset noctilucent clouds

        where one wants to stop and look

way past all the light diffusions and bombardments

up farther than the loss of sight

    into the unseasonal undifferentiated empty stark

And I know if I find you I will have to stay with the earth

inspecting with thin tools and ground eyes

trusting the microvilli sporangia and simplest coelenterates

and praying for a nerve cell

with all the soul of my chemical reactions

and going right on down where the eye sees only traces

You are everywhere partial and entire

You are on the inside of everything and on the outside

I walk down the path down the hill where the sweetgum

has begun to ooze spring sap at the cut

and I see how the bark cracks and winds like no other bark

chasmal to my ant-soul running up and down

and if I find you I must go out deep into your far

    resolutions

and if I find you I must stay here with the separate leaves