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And one other poem that's
kin to that in some way.

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I thought this was a good
poem because, at times, I

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tried to write into the center
of what seems very obvious to me

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but which people seem to deny.

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And the thing that seems obvious
here is that when people die,

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they break up into little
bits, as Philip Larkin says.

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And some parts actually fuel
these slow fountains of trees

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and other parts may harden
and be studied in the future

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by children who read Ranger
Rick in a different fashion.

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But to me, that's a
transcendent thing.

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I don't feel the
oversoul so much, I just

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I feel that's the
way it would be.

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Well, that should be a
comfort to somebody in grief,

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but I don't think it is.

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So I started to write
this for a friend who

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had lost his wife
from breast cancer

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and then I realized,
uh-oh, that doesn't do it.

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This doesn't do it either.

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Because I've known many
women who are dead,

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I try to think of
fields as holy places.

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Whether we plow them or let
them to weeds and sunlight,

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those are the best
places for grief.

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If only that they performed
the peace we come to,

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the feeling without
fingers, the hearing

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without ears, the
seeing without eyes.

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Isn't heaven just this
unbearable presence

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under leaves?

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I had thought so.

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I had believed, at
times, in a meadow.

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And at other times in a
wood where we'd emerge,

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no longer ourselves, but
reduced to many small things

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that we could not
presume to know.

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Except as my friend's
wife begins to disappear,

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he feels no solvent
in all the Earth.

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And me, far off, still
amateur at grief,

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walking the creek
behind the house

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across to the old
home place, find

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a scattering of chimney rocks.

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The seeds my grandmother
watered, the human lifetime

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of middle-aged trees.

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