"Passing a Saw Mill at Night."
There's to me anyway a sense in which when I finally--
when I finished writing--
when I finished writing the poems in my first book, when
I sorted the poems that were going to eventually
be into it out into book form, when I saw the thing come out
and print and everything, I think
this is maybe generally true of people I'm pretty sure it is.
That you kind of get that little package in your hands
and you read it first of all sort of just being
pleased or disturbed or whatever your initial responses
are to seeing your first book.
Then you begin to read the thing like very,
very carefully and with a more objective eye probably
than the poems were written trying to figure out what
it is you're writing about.
For me anyway that kind of thing was true.
And I found that among other things
that most of the poems in my first book
were backward looking poems.
I wasn't disturbed particularly by that but I was aware of it.
And as time went by and I found myself
writing very different kinds of poems eventually
one of the main differences that you can describe
technical changes and all that kind of thing
as much as you want but one of the main differences
is quite simply move them into the present tense
and working gradually to catch up
to yourself in a funny kind of way until your writing
finally about what's going on exactly then.
"The road was straight, a gully braced by stumps
plunged from the edge.
Beyond it the fall field widened through the darkness
toward a clump of trees in silhouette
against the sawmill wall.
Slowing down, I heard the bright smokes--
I watched the bright smoke's scattered ashes
dying among stars.
Years before without a word spoken my father
stopped the Jeep as we hunted his farm.
Our years together ending, the stubble behind us
bright with frost.
We watched the distant mill's dark walls pulse
with swollen squares of fire.
At night, he had told me, he still
move through the smells of oil and gunpowder,
night itself reaching to release the brake.
We know more than we can learn of death and life.
I stopped the car slowly, my wife
leaned against my arm asleep.
Across the road through the living trees,
they're taken, burned."