This next is a piece of salvage, one of those occasions
about which I was unable to write a poem.
So I had tried.
So I finally wrote a poem about not being able to write a poem.
I think I saved it.
It's called An Afternoon on the Ground.
"The ducks and the green drakes covered flooded fields.
The herons struck themselves the plants in the flowing moss.
And pine trees burnt with crows, good source of the mountain.
One hawk rose to the sun, casting no shadow down.
These thoughts were five miles long, stretched
on a river road over a failed bridge, past swampland
and meadows, to the prisons on our farm
where goats pale to the waist, running in bare feet.
The truckies were playing ball.
How could I hold them all between the sides of my head?
The ducks were as good as gone.
The river would calm down, the frogs and herons
would fly together or separately,
like water through the air or air over the water.
And the crows all scatter on the mountain behind them,
be a mountain in a poem off which nothing could fall.
And the hawk turned into feathers.
Along that stretch of river for five miles
hanging on to the truth of the matter
that led some birds to men.
I had trailed it after me.
But suddenly, it tightened and slipped out of my mind.
And the bareback prisoners were running
around a field on the first good day of spring,
lifting their arms, and shouting."