Short Poems

I mean to penetrate the particular
the way an owl waits
for a kangaroo rat

and the photomicrograph
beholds
the hairy pappus
of a dandelion.

I love you
therefore I am
in the present.
I write, beloved,
and retrieve the past.

I love this little house because
It offers, after dark,
A pause for rest, a rest for paws,
A place to moor my bark.

I love Octopussy, his arms are so long;
There's nothing in nature so sweet as his song.
'Tis true I'd not touch him — no, not for a farm!
If I keep at a distance he'll do me no harm.

1. I love my Jesus quite alone. The bride the bride-groom of my
2. The magnet needle erring goes. When from when from the pole dis-
spirit: No others shall my heart, no none. Through love through
tracted. And take before quite no repose. Till he, till
loving more inherit. No man can do at once for two. For
he has her attracted. And since my heart with thy love dart Is
one's for one's will and for t'others: Therefore I'll leave all others.
touched is touched by its flaming ether. Therefore, they haste together.

There was an old person of Shields,
Who rambled about in the fields;
But, being infirm, he fell over a worm
And sighed that he'd ever left Shields.

I hear that you have burned ten thousand of your poems —
all of them, not a single one left!
Now I know that I — the Plank Bridge Recluse —
do much too much talking:
when this poem reaches you, if it bothers you
— please, just burn it right up.

I heard you solemn-sweet pipes of the organ as last Sunday morn I pass'd the church,
Winds of autumn, as I walk'd the woods at dusk I heard your long-stretch'd sighs up above so mournful,
I heard the perfect Italian tenor singing at the opera, I heard the soprano in the midst of the quartet singing;
Heart of my love! you too I heard murmuring low through one of the wrists around my head,
Heard the pulse of you when all was still ringing little bells last night under my ear.

I have not so much emulated the birds that musically sing,
I have abandon'd myself to flights, broad circles.
The hawk, the seagull, have far more possess'd me than the canary or mocking-bird,
I have not felt to warble and trill, however sweetly,
I have felt to soar in freedom and in the fullness of power, joy, volition.

Praise in old times the sage Prometheus won,
Who stole aethereal radiance from the sun;
But greater he, whose bold invention strove
To emulate the fiery bolts of Jove.