Here's another poem from when I was back in New York,
dated 8/20/70.
It's called "Purchase, New York",
and it's a small suburb noted mainly for its golf courses.
At the waterhole, the disturbance I hear is ducks.
Mother of worries looks up from her House & Gardens,
she says they interfered with the game.
Were properly crated and flown upstate, but immediately
returned.
Father of buildings, I became a lawyer, a go-between.
I think of golf balls, the wild ducks on white eggs.
Golfers keeping score of their lost balls,
but not for these foursomes.
This case in mind, I enter a brief laugh.
Life's wryness.
The thought broods on the water, it
enters the ear, past the gray stages,
to the bottom of comprehension.
And comes again, no longer mine, but in my voice.
The rich laughter of the desert canyons, of ancient rock,
of twisted rivers, and the liquid center.