In nights beneath the stars,
sometimes alone — sometimes
with one I loved
(in futile or secret urgency) —
I have outwaited
the rise and fall of Scorpio,
arc of its tail
stinging the treetops.
I have traced the inconstant moon,
the indecisive Venus;
feel more assured
by the long, slow haul of Jupiter,
the patient tread of Pluto
(whom they pursue
in their frigid outer orbits
I cannot guess)
Such solitude,
millennia between
the fly-bys of comets,
perhaps is why
they need so many moons,
why rings of ice
encircle them like loyal cats.
It is lonely in space,
far out
where the sun is merely
a star among stars.
It is lonely in autumn.
I sit in midnight woods.
A trio of raccoons, foraging,
come up to me,
black mask eyes of the young ones
interrogating the first cold night,
the unaccustomed noisiness
of bone-rattle maple leaf
beneath their paws.
How can I tell them
these trees will soon be skeletons,
the pond as hard as glass,
the nut and berry harvest over?
These two are young —
they would not believe me.
Their mother rears up protectively,
smells me, scents out
the panic among the saplings,
the smell of rust and tannin.
We share a long stillness,
a moment when consciousness
is not a passive agency.
Our sight invades the countryside,
embracing everything —
sleepers in beds in a concrete tower-
earthworms entwining in humus rot —
goes up and out through the limpid sky,
streaming past moon —
— moon’s lava’d seas —
out, out, to the arc of the sublime,
tracing the edge of great Antares,
leaping to other galaxies unafraid.
(Let space expand as though the worlds
still feared their neighbors!
Let miser stars implode,
their dwarf hearts shriveling
to cores of iron!)
We are the scourge of entropy.
We sing the one great note
through which new being
comes out of nothingness.
Does it have meaning,
this seed-shagged planet
alive with eyes?
Is earth the crucible,
sandbox of angry gods,
or is it the eye of all eyes,
ear of all ears,
the nerve through which the universe
acquires self-knowledge?
But these are weighty thoughts
for man and mammal!
We are but blood and minerals,
upright for an instant,
conscious for but a moment,
a grainfall of cosmic hourglass.
Yet I am not ephemeral:
I freeze time,
relive moments
chronicle the centuries
re-speak Shakespeare,
beat out the staves of Mozart,
read the same books
my forebears knew
make of old words
my wordy pyramid.
I am the one
snapping the pictures of solar systems,
sending myself
an outside-in self-portrait.
I send my name and signature
on bottles spinning past Uranus.
I am the one who asks, Is it worth it?
I who hear the X-ray wind reply, It is!
I am the one who would not stay in caves,
I was discontent in the treetops.
I wanted to be bird and whale and rocket.
Ever, o ever more mortal now —
— friends falling away like withered leaves —
still I find joy in this subliminal shrine of autumn.
My hand is full of fossil shells
picked up from the lake shore rubble,
scallops enduring with the same rock faith
(implicit minimum vocabulary):
I live, and the increase of my consciousness
is the span of my life.
— February 19, 1991, Providence, RI
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