Copyright © 1999 Janet Lewis Winters.
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 0-8040-1012-9
Chapter One
Two Songs of Advent
I.
On the desert, between pale mountains, our cries—
Far whispers creeping through an ancient shell.
II.
Coyote, on delicate mocking feet,
Hovers down the canyon, among the mountains,
His voice running wild in the wind's valleys.
Listen! Listen! for I enter now your thought.
One Ran Before
I could tell
Of silence where
One ran before
Himself and fell
Into silence
Yet more fair.
And this were more
A thing unseen
Than falling screen
Could make of air.
Song for a Small Boy
Who Herds Goats
Sweeter than rough hair
On earth there is none,
Rough as the wind
And brown as the sun.
I toss high my short arms
Brown as the sun,
I creep on the mountains
And never am done.
Sharp-hoofed, hard-eyed,
Trample on the sun!—
Sharp ears, stiff as wind,
Point the way to run!
Who on the brown earth
Knows himself one?
Life is in lichens
That sleep as they run.
Alone
I, one who never speaks,
Listened days in summer trees,
Each day a rustling leaf.
Then, in time, my unbelief
Grew like my running—
My own eyes did not exist,
When I struck I never missed.
Noon, felt and far away—
My brain is a thousand bees.
Winter Echo
Thin air! My mind is gone.
Spring Rain
My doorframe smells of leaves.
The Aspen's Song
The summer holds me here.
God of Roads
I, peregrine of noon.
A Deer
The trees rose in the dawn.
The Precincts of February
Junipers,
Steely shadows,
Floating the jay.
A man,
Heavy and ironblack,
Alone in the sun,
Threading the grass.
The cold,
Coming again
As spring
Came up the valley,
But to stay
Rooted deep in the land.
The stone-pierced shadows
Trod by the bird
For day on day.
José's country
A pale horse,
Mane of flowery dust,
Runs too far
For a sound
To cross the river.
Afternoon,
Swept by far hooves
That gleam
Like slow fruit
Falling
In the haze
Of pondered vision.
It is nothing.
Afternoon
Beyond a child's thought,
Where a falling stone
Would raise pale earth,
A fern ascending.
The Upper Meadows
The harvest falls
Throughout the valleys
With a sound
Of fire in leaves.
The harsh trees,
Heavy with light,
Beneath the flame, and aging,
Have risen high and higher.
Apricots,
The clustered
Fur of bees,
Above the gray rocks of the uplands.
The hunter deep in summer.
Grass laid low by what comes,
Feet or air—
But motion, aging.
Moonrise
The branches,
jointed, pointing
up and out, shine
out like brass.
Upon the heavy
lip of earth
the dog
at
moments is
possessed and screams:
The rising moon draws
up his blood and hair.
The Cold
Frigidity the hesitant
uncurls its tentacles
into a furry sun.
The ice expands
into an insecurity
that should appal
yet I remain, a son
of stone and of a
commentary, I, an epitaph,
astray in this
oblivion, this
inert labyrinth
of sentences that
dare not end. It
is high noon and
all is the more quiet
where I trace
the courses of the Crab
and Scorpion, the Bull,
the Hunter, and the Bear—
with front of steel
they cut an aperture
so clear across the
cold that it cannot
be seen: there is no
smoky breath, no
breath at all.
Digue Dondaine, Digue Dondon
Sun on the sidewalk
for the corpse to
pass through like the
dark side of a leaf
in the immobile
suddenness of spring
he stood there
in the streetlight
casting a long shadow
on the glassed begonias
madness under
his streaked eyelids
miles away the
cold plow in veined earth
the wind fled hovering
like swarming bees
in highest night
the streets paved with
the moon smooth to
the heels
and he whirled off in
Time
and pale and small
children that run shrieking
through March doorways
burst like bubbles
on the cold twigs
block on block away
Nocturne
Moonlight on stubbleshining
hills
whirls down upon me finer than geometry
and at my very
eyes it blurs and softens like a dream
In leafblack houses
linen smooth with sleep
and folded by cold life itself for limbs so definite
their passion is
persistent like a pane of glass
about their feet the clustered
birds are sleeping
heavy with incessant life
The dogs swim close to earth
A kildee rises
dazed and rolled amid the sudden blur of sleep
above the dayglare of the fields
goes screaming
off toward darker hills.