J a n C l a u s e n —

Yet And Still

Shame should not be for fountains.

—Gertrude Stein, Stanzas in Meditation

I walk in gardens thinking of wilderness

Lay down your drone displays. Convenience stores

Nimbly humbly pluckily grumpily

Why live like this I query carousel crowds

I wish them well. I wish them well away

I require a wide wild

An uncontainer for the mind

And so the redolence of stanzas' crushed idiom

Loosed as if by steeping aromatic herbs

Could be diffused over time

A craft that laughs might last might it not

Or else the other way round

But there's a mean learning curve

Lay down your excellence

I walk in gardens thinking of history

O we're in deep

Lilacs' asses on fire

Yet it seems walled beauty calms me

Where it frames the low surprise

Of petals late affixed to cherry boughs

Be-pinking avenues

I get their quiet drift

In case one's borders with a wound

Called the world grow obscure

Never fear. Death is near

Lay down your ropes. Lay down your rubrics

Hot blossoms beat towards drought

Drums of a drying year

I pass as if in conscience unperturbed

But why build gardens on injustices

Yet and  still

I say I

Fire at will

Roses

Gone To Ground (January)

People who have to live now

make me tired

and I'm tired of shining hairs

a silver drift on every floor

a sluttish ornament to fabric

threat to soup

though beautiful

in some lights

~

I couldn't plumb the map

and so I trickle

down the page

~

I consider the wind a warden in whose despite

I have pitched my unauthorized pup tent

~

I say irk

you say vex

~

Reaches

(not depths)

of winter

~

View from my room's the three-

trunked honey locust's

bramble-canopy                                                     

00000soot-feathered pigeons

00000hunker there

00000as if disgusted with the season

quite the black-

and-white scheme

you could say

(you would lie)

still

the storm's partitioned

every branch and twig

a strip of snow-fur up top                                               

a line of dark bark below

around the park loop

surprising snow hats 

on the horse turds

home

and the tree's become

an eerie hive

kinetic scatterings of birds

brown and small

come and go

bouncing snow-

clots off the boughs 

~

It touched me (why)

to picture

the small-island house

engulfed

in a fugue of ash

from La Soufrière

~

To speak

outside one's time

what gift

is that

~

Botanicals/simples

filaments/tendencies

~

Been laboring

under some

soul-strain

mustn't

cave

~

I eke it out/I boil it down

(we make it up)

my purview shrunk

(expanded?)

to the squint

of an anchoress

~

She tells me

how it happened

in the night

suddenly

his blood

pressure dropped

plague-masked

we climb

the half-plowed hill

~

A widow

is a window

but how many

care to look

~

To brush (the hair)

to shovel (snow)

these motions

and these sounds

~

To speak

outside one's time

as if ablaze

(but under

water, really)

~

Milled fine

by the daily grind

which is also

grounding

~

Stand

                                    whose

ground

                                                                        o settler

~

Quinoa/amaranth

barley/millet/teff

~

To speak

and will

a hearer

into ears

futility

belike

~

He cycles past me

chanting dread advice

Look behind yuh

yuh house is on fi-yah

~

Whatever is begotten

birthed and dies

must feel the heat

~

My shadow

long and tall

in the low-slung light

strides resolute

thought little else

is clear

~

Gone to earth

gone to sky

~

Hair in my mouth

am I ready

for augury