WHO
Who spots the golden eye of the lynx
Or the mushroom nestled in the oak root.
Who posits the dictum I am, therefore I think
In a reverse Descartes, a sort of brute
Ideology mastering the animate nation.
Who envisions the way the lake
Ripples in the forenoon like a shed skin.
Who first praised the rattlesnake’s
Divinity, the way it can move in
And out of itself, a self creation.
Who took the maiden’s hand,
Who led her to the sacred well
Where bones bleached into a command
For rain that, for ages, never fell.
Who celebrated then, with what elation.
WHAT
What translates the language of the rain
On rooftops on a Tuesday morning.
What calculates the images of fame
Or billows with cumulonimbus warning
Like storms clenching right at the horizon.
What mimics the footfalls of the small
Creatures or the hoofbeats of the horses.
What can we learn from the terrible
Patterns of the wind or watercourses
Braiding to a portentous liaison.
What happens when the curtains start to sway
What luminosity can be affected
In a moment that’s an hour, then a day
So everything we knew is indirected
And diffuse, a kind of gauzy prison.
WHERE
Where did the footprints lead
Where was the forest path we sought
In the painting by Renoir. The seed
Of philosophy is withering and fraught
With bad desires, a pond of algae.
Where else can the storied gold be hid
Sacred mountains and rainbows are a child’s
Fantasy—a kettle with no lid
Where everything boils, tame and wild
A deafened ear, a defective eye.
Where is the church of the possible
The anteroom where everyone kneels
The voices raised in a spurious gospel
Where the statues bless and the bell peels
And the sacrament is merely a sigh
WHY
Why even ask this question
Or any question, answers are like mist
Over a river or the incessant
Reasons behind the Judas kiss.
Why betray ourselves or each other.
Why double back when the path is clear
Why second guess every second thought.
The wood is dark, the fox the deer
In silent bowers. Why calculate the cost
Of love, its aptitude to smother.
Why examine the nuance of each sentence
The breakbone evidence of plow on clod.
Why save a talisman for remembrance
Or speculate on if there is a god
How that could impact any lover.
WHEN
When all the barns have collapsed
When windfall apples rot in a gorge of bees
When hollow trees creak in every synapse
Of weather and splitting let the fence wires seize
The edges of the unoccupied pastures.
When fields rise up again in native grasses
And cultivation is an aborted birth
When buffalo emerge from mountain passes
Like ghostly dreams drummed out of the earth
Invisibly, spirits of vanquished textures
When rain falls constantly or not at all
When fires consume the prairies and the slopes
Of foothills where witchlike figures in a caul
Of ash stand like emblems of our various hopes
Making jagged vaguely obscene gestures.
When dark or light is now or never
And you and I are gone forever.
