Living in the West where the wild cows graze,
gazing at the thunder coming like trumpets
across the valley, unperturbed, chewing and ambling.

Living in the West with the weedy rocks
and the promising sun campaigning Spring
through golden clouds anxious with fickle weather.

Living in the West where the dog feels free
in his shepherd instinct, yipping his people home.
Nose to the earth, he claims the fenceless desert his.

Living in the West with the scents of rivers
and ragged cliffs that chew the sky,
and trees leafed like chimes to the strumming wind.

Living in the West, a man gets tall to see further
and a woman grows honest in the strength of her love.

LV.

The plumlike nose, the made-up eyes,
she smokes her gum on the telephone,
hips controlled in her tip-toe walk.
Look up the door when the bell sounds off.

Mars gleams pink in her forehead skies,
borrowed terms in her dog-bark talk
clench the juice of her daily bone.
Lope off to lunch when the bell sounds off.

Back in the shop the paper flies,
the buttons speak and the ladies balk.
Fetch the mail when the bell sounds off.

She makes slow work of my short replies.
I snooze off when I'm left alone,
go back home when the bell sounds off.

LVI.

Tree lines look past the skipping swans
fled their huddle under the willows wept
tiny leaves gone golden like coins
softly bobbing in the paddled wake.

Ducks cry to the bleeding sky, the blind
sudden winter come to freeze the lake
and the lily pads trapped and the nest
abandoned by the babes' new wings

where the hidden hunters crouch with
poised stones sharpened on the wheel
of justice and nature's cruel rule:
The arrow's aim draws the right flight

from the eye of need to the heart of death.
See the crows balanced black on pain.

LVII.

The crow has spoken to the minnow's wish
where the subject whines in the mirth of bells,
held fast to the winning clouds. She cries
like a fish: scales for feathers, fins for wings.

His teeth, sharp as a shark's, sink into his
vanity, her surrender to his absolute service.
The small arms of their child Remorse extend
toward the material objects of their worship.

Their time syndrome seeks control; he welds
in the night his dream logic to his physical
sensations, she feels the child's anger throb
in its separate heart where hers is most tender.

They have derived the sense of the ceremony
having given, received, created and dissolved.

LVIII.

These times give us our moment's hesitation,
a long moment of years or centuries.
We pause for safety on the eve of our revolution
lest we unleash the violence of our furies.

The cold eye we fling on your guarded traditions
looks on the seed as the unit of meaning,
as nature's decisive and inherent condition,
the core of life and its purpose in being.

Now you sit in the shade of your ancient tree
with a nest fixed in its firm branches;
but the wind which threatens your security
scatters the tree's fruit on the world's chances.

We wait by the willing field for the inevitable storm
with seeds of doubt and courage to sow among the corn.

LIX.

Well then we held the banner high,
strung the shouts of our joy
across the wind like flags, symbols
of a new nation born in pleasure.

What did we suffer for? climb
the rare peaks for? Who were the kings
who personified our expectations?
Those fat old fools and their lusts!

We were the world's first lovers
who felt in their sexual convulsions
the freedom of a new nation,
a people bound by the making of love.

What betrayed us to the future dragons?
Who scolded us to think of things that matter?

LX.

Much of this is written for the silent sister
never grown out of the womb, but thrown;
too frail for birth, her strings to life cut loose
by our mother's fall down the dark stairs.

She was my closest soul, lost before my conception;
yet I've ever missed that link of warm voice
to the terrible strident world, that buffer of kin
between its matter and my sensitive spirit.

She was the literary one who would sing folk songs
with me in sibling harmony or paint the scenes
to compliment my rhymes in water color on
Japanese silk, draw me when I was too young

to remember out of the recesses of my fear
of yes and no with the brushes of her love.

LXI.

The window holds its lifeless lights,
a cage of glass with no display.
Reflections sink in backward space,
the halls are empty, silent, bright.

He sits with knees and ankles braced,
balanced limbs in stiff repose;
the painted eyes in his plaster face
stab the glass like nails in ice,

trace the thought in his sawdust brain:
imagined life, he dances there
with boneless legs and cotton hair.

People pass and smile in vain;
he sits--his stoic lips are closed--
and lets his single stare suffice.

LXI.

Then the man with the wrinkled hat
hollered out of prison, "Bring me
the heel of the dragon whose will
compelled me to these depths!" The lady

listening with suffering eyes answered,
"He is my provider, though I hate
the heavy claw with which he scrapes
his diamonds from the soil." Then

the man with hat in hand demanded,
"You are the symbol of salvation,
heal these shackle bruises on my arms and make my heart
beat again to freedom!" She touched him

with the kindest tenderness and said, "No."
He went away, hauling his dungeon with him.

LXII.

He stands diminished from his goal
on painless steps around the hill.
To suffer causes value, yet
his efforts mask his wishes' will
to climb or fly with lazy dread.
No rain to catch, no tears to spill,
he makes a badge of his begging bowl,

a symbol from a useful tool.
He draws its reference with a skill
derived from molding dreams instead
of clay in shapes that he could fill
with fruits and gems without regret.
He stands diminished, thinking still
he can't abide the unsaid rule.