Lorin
Ford
Increase
A
house with books, a visitor, some trees,
french
windows in the kitchen facing east,
rainbows
slipping from sight in the bevelled edges
of
unwashed panes. He notes her taste
for
English teapots, roses, Russian tea,
and
that her hall is full of clutter.
‘Bad
Feng Shui!’ His editor’s eye
counts
adverbs, adjectives; loathes utterly
excess
– loves image. A pink branch taps
at
the window – blossoming nectarine.
The
softballers look good (the TV’s on
in
another room) She sees his eyes
in
their playful, cornflower blue shift
to
the window. ‘There could be a haiku
here
in your poem if you only deleted …’
They
sip their tea, smoke joints and cigarettes
at
the kitchen table.
Outside –
red
stars in riot at the centre of each
pink
spin of petals, speechless.
‘The
tree on the mountain ... does not shoot up like a swamp plant; its
growth proceeds gradually' , I
Ching, Richard Wilhelm translation
from
being the mountain
to
being the tree
on
the mountain –
always
I’m counselled
to
stillness
but
ever was
impatient
to
be in the thick
of
life
swamped
in the
green throng
of
stem limb
leaf sweet mud
all
that spring and hustle and
discontent
with
standing in the wind
and
the changes of weather
though
touched
at times
by wing brush
of a wild goose
passing
through
and
unwilling
to
lose my
roots
tapped
deep
to
granite
secrets
the
view of mist
and
distance
the
ever-changing sky
Visitation
after John Berryman
Mountains
has he and hopt
did Henry
there off the ledge O
plummet in
luv. Spake by the spadeful
much like
red-eyed St. John O
(Baptist,
th’) scarey-wretcht
a desert
-ing
father will not of God
no
Speak no
fire this next and measure,
O dancer,
brightening, exact brimful
All drink
come pink lust other ( ’n thas
th’
test) even as elephant must O
Dreams
crost – th’ one ’bout walking underwater
an’
halloween leaving, sweet my daughter
Full on
sin did Henry, did himself
down by
the river try drown O
Bones: un-drunkt,
where is your comforting? and,
yr aim
right off, though
