It's good to be young.
You can say all manners of kinds of things
before you know what people will say about you
you're saying them.
This is called, "Landscape with Leaves and Figure."
"Passionate love is temporary insanity the Chinese say.
That day I walked nine miles in the bowl the hill makes,
coming round and round avoiding the road in sane
I realized a few weeks later, at the time I sank my crepe soles
in the spread of leaves, grass, needles, bedding, down the path
I took describing every tree, bush, fern, each stone, leaf,
stick, isolate detail in the mind, one woman.
It was icy cold.
My nose froze.
In the air, lichen were dancing up hundred-footed trees,
the ivy dirndling up.
Like glitter, flint, I stood there planted firmly
and I could not feel the cold, wind, rain, the ivy glinting
savagely like mirrors on the skirts,
the six-armed goddess dancing a storm, wet,
it was wet inside the forest, though no rain was falling.
It was sliding down.
And you, meanwhile, clear across country from the snow
packs of Vermont, two weeks, one half, a honeydew, papaya, moon
were eating while I rimmed the bowl the woods make,
the penetrating silence between rains and Oregon,
insane, I realized a few days later
and I said since you had not yet left because I love you.
Yes, you said.
I know that day."