Backyard Sojourn

After Robert Duncan's "Four Songs the Night Nurse Sang"

I hesitate
to move the wind around;
God has created in me
a victim.

I can't but know these ice plants
as my own,
But still they grow
beyond my dreaming!

The trees are sculptures
of lust and death;
That's what I know of life,
it's end and endlessness

Yet Apollo is my brother,
the ruler of the sun,
My fingers move the waters,
my hands can grasp the stones.

The beasts can sense my danger
and yet I feel alone.
I make believe I'm one of them
and fly beneath a bowl,

And everything is moving,
all that seems so still,
Constantly returning
to nests of new beginnings.

But I feel quite adrift here,
a rock on plains of grass
That grow forever higher
and move always together,

And always make a sound
that I cannot repeat,
That stirs my ancient origins,
my center of belief.

My garden's mournful whispers show
how empty is my heart
That beats upon a mirrored door
I've locked myself outside.