poetry notebook

A single duck who quacks and paddles in an arc

upstream causes panic in the river,

a turmoil on the surface not from

wind or duck feet.

The river forged a path through rocky

mountains dense with forest. A highway

follows, sedan, logging truck, motorcycle,

pickup, panel truck, and sports car

follow with wheels hissing on wet

pavement up the mountainside out

of sight not continous or near

even in the summer.

I often address you in my poems

but i don’t even know who you are

nor even for certain whether or not

you are me. 

Either way, how do I know 

it’s really you? Is it?

Am I being

indiscrete?

Are you? And what makes you

think that I is I?

Someone asks these questions, but

who is who is not important.

Look at things as though they were

photographs or paintings or drawings

framed by your eye to give you

the maximum pleasure you can

derive from the landscape

wherever you are by the way

you frame it and hear it and see it

and add, like that artform you

wanted to create.. remember it?

You were maybe 16 and it came

to mind in a flash – to make

something that would engage all

of the senses, a box maybe,

painted, variously textured, made to be

touched, resonant and redolent with

sounds and incense or perfume

or dog shit (whatever the

particular piece calls for) and

flavors and poems.

See it that way, wherever you are,

this work of art, this avatar of

the six senses in which you’re

so lost in the is 

of whatever you’re with.

Know it

as a work of fictional genius

as often as you can.

Even in summer.

In 10 minutes gazing into a river

So many things happen that

If placed end to end

They would reach into eternity.

Have I, older than multitudes

Who have died,

Begun

Learning only now

How to see?