from ONE LOOKS AT ONE by Morgan Gibson




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   ===                from                     ===
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   ===           ONE LOOKS AT ONE              ===
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   ===                 by                      ===
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   ===            MORGAN GIBSON                ===
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SEARCHING FOR DAWN
Goldfish
swam as we
slept.
*
Arms going up
hands spreading out
body a flow of slow waves.
*
Searching for dawn
I pad through leaves
to the lake.
*
Light from the lake
leaks through
woods.
*
Reaching
a little more
sky.
*
Dew drips
from beached
canoes.
*
I look
at the lake
face to face.
*
That fisherman's
paddling
out of a Chinese painting.
*
Swallows
stitch
lake and sky.
*
Fish rip
the surface
and fall.
*
I dip
my mind
in the water.
*
Does the sun
rise from water
or mind?
*
Sounding the sky
bubbling poetry
through it.
*
Pine boughs
shadow
my poems.
*
A spider
climbs down from my cap
to read my poems.
*
My poems
blow all over
with leaves of Tu Fu and Whitman.
*
Clouds pass
buds
brighten.
*
Weeds
in first light
look good enough to eat.
*
The ease of grow-
ing weeds, the joy
of their perfection.
*
Raindrops
quiver
on the line:
I am thirsty
but only look.
*
The sparrow on the wall
watches me
watching him
watching me fly away.
*
In the garden
squirrels
quarrel.
*
The blue air
bathes
a bluebird.
*
A bluebird's air
bathes
silence.
*
Moss on birches.
Clouds on sky.
Where am I?
*
Stones, moss, dirt
in greenery of light.
*
A garden before gardening:
we have been here all along.
*
Panicking
red
leaves.
*
Beware
be aware
beware.
*
Above all
mind
the birds.
*
Leaves burn
in the sun
like suns.
*
A new
lit
world.
*
Sunshine
melts me
down.
*
Clouds of the mind
drift on.
I touch the sky
with my tongue.

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SNOW GLARE OF ABSENCE
In mummybag
in a tomb of leaves
this hungry ghost.
*
Love secrets
in my bones.
Too long.
*
Thunder crawls over
the sand dunes
growling.
*
Snow fools
with yellow leaves
as everyone fooled me.
*
Land of
loess and
loss.
*
Watching snow
listening to snow
and "snow."
*
The snow
glare of
absence
under
the moon.
*
Moonlit falling snow
shapes faces flying
past, forever lost.
*
Snow breathing on snow.
Deer are bleeding in snow
that drifts behind the summerhouse.
*
Washing my face in snow
in the middle of the night
my heart still beating
half my life behind me
half before me
living half a life.
*
Under the December moon
I broke off a twig of pine
and a twig of Washington Hawthorne
with wrinkled orange berries.
Inside I planted the twigs
in a cup filled with
Japanese stones.
The needles were dusty cold.
Among them berries glowed
like distant villages burning.
*
The snow
holds the dead
together:
the whole
world is one
cold eye.
*
Birds before dawn
singing
together.
I am ready
to let
go.
Listen as if
when they stop
we die.
*
Is the snow
too bright
for form?
Shining
surrounds me
absorbs me.
Where
did
I
go?

=========================================================
I SEE MY BREATH, THE SNOWING NIGHT
1
I snowshoed to the brook and back
thumping along in semblance of a poem
wanting to tell my life straight through
but finding no beginning, shape, nor end
wanting to stop wanting
waiting for stopping to come
but woke to a blinding setting sun
where there is nowhere to go.
2
I went out to gaze at stars.
They came bright into me.
I would drift gladly among them:
mind cloud.
Looking for little words
(but they are too big, too loud)
I am tired of people-mind
all the bad dreams of faces.
I am tired of the many
and the One is beyond me, far.
How can I drift
beyond stars?
3
I see my breath, the snowing light.
I hear the breathing of my mind.
I do not wait for stepping stones.
I often went on too long for light
running at the mouth too far
till my breathing fell apart.
I woke from pieces in a show of light.
My breathing dared to dance again
to songs I watch in snowy air.

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FIVE FOR THE FIRST AMERICANS
AND FOR GARY SNYDER
1
The Indian graveyard was washed away.
For years we stumbled on ribs
and skulls, picking teeth from sand
where storms had washed them down
from bluff roots where they were buried
at some tribe's end of the world
the great lake dying
washing our soles and their bones
O burn my bones when I'm through!
2
In deer woods, burying Indians'
brown bones gathered from the beach
I enter again dark memories of birth:
mosquitoes over the fungus-path
whining waves of annihilation on my cheeks
shudder me into damp growth of deer woods
where buzzing light flows painfully new
over fresh trillia and ferns
of mounds of trees and graves of Indians.
3
far I have walked
so far I forgot
what I started for:
from dune roots
to luna leaves
mushroom woods
suicide bluff
beach of bones
sumac farm
meadow stones
between pine woods
in the skin of space
in the breath of time
I wait for the sky
to take me in.
4.
On hands and knees
in cemetery wild
strawberries
here I am:
Pilgrim
woods dreamt of in city winters
rooted in graves of Indians
here
wherever I go.
Their sky in my skull.
Clouds pass
leaves darken
glow
I am here and there
breathing their air
walking their earth
one body
rising
raining
burning
storming.
5
Leaving the lake of moons and mushroom
tearing my roots from Indian graves and dunes
I'm going back to city masks
muscle-minds and babel storms
off-beats of the heart
battle-swirl and snow of death.

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Copyright © 1999 by Morgan Gibson.
Light and Dust Mobile Anthology of Poetry.