The worm eats the mind and the hands
Until the core is hollowed out,
Draw a line from your mind,
From the breath to the waterspout,

Don’t remain there either, because
The eggs are in the nest high
Above the forest floor, and if
The mother bird doesn’t fly,

The sun will set, the eggs will die,
And in a moment of self-disgust,
The trees themselves will shiver in
A wind that carries yellow dust.

I floated into a little life
(Including ideas of bigness). The ruts
Led away from the hills that threw up behind them
The mountains and a storm that struts,

Carrying inside itself the blazing
Secret of a blaze beyond
Blaze, the air grows iron, hard
To endure, dim, a until a bond

Breaks, it’s crushed and your mind
Is crushed, agitated, mad,
You should have been strong, you should have been
A meteor, ironclad,

And now your thoughts dwindle into
Dust, your steps lurch, brilliant
Lights sprinkle into dust,
Arousing the scorn of sturdy, potent

Men, because we—you
And I—are far from life. Our thought
Is so feeble, entire states close down,
The counties are dark and overwrought.

Imagine Jupiter is a state of mind
And your mind is free and freedom floats
And soaks into your arms and hands,
And the ship sinks, and the lifeboats

Can barely survive in the choppy sea,
Racing under the water, through
The blue luminescence, are thoughts,
And teh thoughts rise on an avenue

That is forever, that is the entire
Solar system, that is the fruit,
Lighten the load and speed even
More ardently upon this route.

Sometimes, it crashes. The bird bashes
Into the windshield, the airplane smashes,
Everything stops—but a plume of smoke--
And the light crumbles into ashes.

That package you were rushing to
Deliver, you sag, you fall to your knees,
You crawl to the curb, everything
Has turned into facsimiles.

Your hands are weak and numb. You think:
Life that has made me sick can make
Me well. And in the center of the gray
Chaos forms the tree in daybreak.

Even when the aperture
Is small, you still can take a photo,
You will still see the light, the rushing
Stream, the streamers of Kyoto,

And everything you do, every
Movement of your hands is light,
But not yet, not until
The white mountains rise in flight.

But the darkness still fills your throat.
I know why we are here, to hew
A rock from this quarry, to carry
A priceless treasure in a canoe.

You were all there, weren’t you,
From the start? Now it’s harder, now
The tribe is hidden, now every
One behind his own plow.

But listen, we’re no longer children
And we can free the sun that sank
Deep into the soil, and find
The silver in the riverbank.

This plasma of the sun created
Planets and my thoughts created
Deeds. Thoughts swell in them, the drupelets
Of the berries are saturated,

My mind is swelling, it contains
Avenue X, and the car
On Stillwell Avenue cruises, its light
Illuminates the fleeing czar,

And for that moment—as the foliage
Shadows streak the street—each
Movement of our strides is bright,
How bright each granule on the beach.

He said he came to mow the lawn
But he’s cutting down the tulip tree.
There goes the streetlamp.
Oh dear the roof! My certainty,

My wealth, it won’t do to accept
His bill with humility. “You horrid
Man, be off!” even though
I may be old, I may be florid.

He showed me the house. Some parts you can move--
Like the sliding glass doors. It was built for you,
It was built for everyone. Its windows
Overlook the avenue.

It’s bright and broad, it helps you be
Who you are, you are inspired
To stand in the living room and speak
Words that will be treasured and wired

To Timbuktu and set on golden
Plates for exoplanets, words
That are spoken here and heard there,
Carried on the wings of birds,

Carried through the undying roads
Of Nebraska in the twilight,
Where fields burst with seed, where smoke
Rises from a meteorite.

And the more we understand,
The more we know, the more we are
At home. I am just me, and smoke
Rises from a green cigar.

What we live (when we don’t live
In the tangle and those swinging
Bridges with missing planks) are pictures
Made of air concocted of floating

Shimmerings that are the orbit
Where you and I sing. Wherever
They hide, we find them, star to star,
That is our sole endeavor,

Our attention sings to
The fireflies. We find the sparks
On dark continents, they skip
Across the deeds of matriarchs,

They flit across the cable waves
Creating thoughts vaster than
The galaxy or clustered with ants,
Or traveling in a caravan.

(”What I want to say is”—he paused, because
He wished he knew what he longed to say.)
“The soul”—(he hadn’t said any
Thing at all, yesterday

He could have said the same)—sparks
Scattered into the deep, black
Water and winked out, but
(He believed) the vivid stack

Of the lighthouse flecked its beam
Across the sea. He felt it then,
The crowding in of yesterday,
The waste pits of careless men

And a heavy, heavy crow that beat
Its slow wings and leaped, its wings
Caught the air, a fire lifted up,
The sound of calls, of clamorings.

Something lit up here,(other
Wise the darkness is unpleasant--
Kind of rich, the soil in a cellar
And a dust that’s ever-present),

(And when the light turns up, so does
The heat—it isn’t wasted.) it can
Light the coast of Oregon
And, along the White Sea, the woman

Gathering stones, until the dark
Roads, clogged in the back country,
Are feebly lit, and then bright
With globes that shine on the debris,

That’s a good place to be, where even
Coal mines are discovery,
No black-lung miners, no riots,
No blows, no blood and thuggery,

Oh that air is good, it started
Blowing from the sea, and in
The morning everything was white
With frost, with shawls above the chin

We breathed what we had always wished
(Or been afraid) to breathe. (Oh please--
Might this) crackling frost give way
(If only in parentheses,

To start) to golden sunshine molten
In the lungs, so tundra plains
To Tokyo (and hooded eyes)
And sheets of rain and golden grains

(Yes, even in the room where shadow
Always nibbled at the blinds)
Light unwinds the senses, heats
The bones and clears out our minds.