This new book has two sequences in it.
One of them is like the "Kyrie" book in that
all the parts are made alike.
They're all the same length, and they also
have various kind of restrictions.
The second one, though, is quite different in that all the parts
are made very different from one another,
in terms of trying to use lyrics and trying
to use some short narratives.
And they all cluster around a single sort of topic
of meditation or inquiry.
And the sequence is called The Art of Distance.
And I'll read just a couple of those.
And then I'll end with something else.
So the Art of Distance, 1.
"Wrinkle coming toward me in the grass,
no fatter than that rickrack or the scallops a ruffle
roughly makes down to about the 14th vertebra, the rest of it
rod instead of a coil--
so I'd been wrong the afternoon before when
the dog, curious, eager to play, and bored with me
as I harvested the edge of the raspberry thicket stalked it
from the back stoop to the lip of the bank
and grab the tip in her mouth and tossed it,
sudden vertical shudder, shoulder level.
Wrong to read survival in its cursive spiraling back
to the cellar window-well where it had gathered field mice like
a cat--
And now if it meant to be heading for the brook,
it veered off course, its blunt head raised
like a swimmer's in distress.
The functioning part gave out just short of me
inside the shade but not the bush.
The damaged part two fingers thick
was torqued pale belly up, sunstruck.
I left it where it, took the dog in,
and for hours watched from the kitchen window what
seemed a peeled stick, the supple upper body that
had dragged it now pointed away and occluded
by the shade, the uncut grass.
My strict father would have been appalled not to dispatch
a uselessly suffering thing.
Made me the same, he'd say as the man who
seeing a toad, catatonic Buddha in its niche,
wedged within the vise of a snake's efficient mouth clamped
open for then closing slowly down
and over it bludgeoned them both with the flat side of a hoe.
For once I will accept my father's judgment.
But this had been my yard, my snake, old enemy, resident
at the back side of the house.
For hours the pet dog panting and begging,
I watched from the window as from a tower wall
until it vanished, reluctant arrow aimed at where
the berries ripened and fell."