My love’s manners in bed
are not to be discussed by me,
as mine by her
I would not credit comment upon gracefully.
Yet I ride by the margin of that lake in
the wood, the castle,
and the excitement of strongholds;
and have a small boy’s notion of doing good.
Oh well, I will say here,
knowing each man,
let you find a good wife too,
and love her as hard as you can.
Robert Creeley
from Echoes by Robert Creeley
Body sits single,
waiting–
but for what
it knows not.
Old words
echoing what
the physical
can’t–
“Leave love,
leave day,
come
with me.”
from Later (9) by Robert Creeley
But now–
but now the wonder of life is
that it is at all,
this sticky sentimental
warm enclosure,
feels place in the physical
with others,
lets mind wander
to wondering thought,
then lets go of itself,
finds a home
on earth.
THE INNOCENCE by Robert Creeley
Looking to the sea, it is a line
of unbroken mountains.
It is the sky.
It is the ground. There
we live, on it.
It is a mist
now tangent to another
quiet. Here the leaves
come, there
is the rock in evidence
or evidence.
What I come to do
is partial, partially kept.
reposting this for Robert M Goldstein & some other bloggers I’ve gotten to know: Childish by Robert Creeley
Great stories matter–
but the one who tells them
hands them on
in turn to another
who also will.
What’s in the world
is water, earth,
and fire, some people,
animals, trees, birds,
etc. I can see
as far as you,
and what I see I tell
as you told me
or have or will.
You’ll see too
as well.
The Children: after Patrick Kavanagh by Robert Creeley
Down on the sidewalk recurrent
children’s forms, reds, greens,
walking along with the watching
elders not their own.
It’s winter, grows colder and colder.
How to play today without sun?
Will summer, gone, come again?
Will I only grow older and older?
Not wise enough yet to know
you’re only here at all
as the wind blows, now
as the fire burns low.
an old favorite: Later by Robert Creeley
If I could get
my hands on
a little bit
of it–neither fish,
flesh, nor fowl. Not
you, Harry. No one’s
mother–or father,
or children. Not
me again. Not
earth, sky, water–
no mind, no time.
No islands in the sun.
Money I don’t want.
No place more
than another–
I’m not here
by myself. But,
if you want to give
me something for Xmas,
I’ll be around.
in anticipation of Mother’s Day, a post for all those mothers no longer with us: Valentine by Robert Creeley
Had you a dress
would cover you all
in beautiful echoes
of all the flowers I know,
could you come back again,
bones and all,
just to talk
in whatever sound,
like letters spelling words,
this one says, Mother,
I love you-–
that one, my son.
Back by Robert Creeley
Suppose it all turns into, again,
just the common, the expected
people, and places, the distance
only some change and possibly one
or two among them all, gone–
that word again–or simply more
alone than either had been
when you’d first met them. But you
also are not the same,
as if whatever you were were
the memory only, your hair, say,
a style otherwise, eyes now
with glasses, clothes even
a few years can make look
out of place, or where you
live now, the phone, all of it
changed. Do you simply give
them your address? Who?
What’s the face in the mirror then.
Who are you calling.
Valentine by Robert Creeley
Had you a dress
would cover you all
in beautiful echoes
of all the flowers I know,
could you come back again,
bones and all,
just to talk
in whatever sound,
like letters spelling words,
this one says, Mother,
I love you–
that one, my son.
Leonard Durso 