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She’d belt her brassy voice over the waves’ backbeat. No one sings better than her.

Would she ever bite the inside of her cheek?

Would she yell at the moon to quit tugging at her hem, or would she whistle, drop her blue dress and shimmy through space to cleave to that shimmer?

What did she mean to say that morning she spit out the emaciated whale wearing a net for a corset?

All this emptying on the sand. Eyeless shrimp. Oiled pelicans.

Within her jaws the coral forests, glittering fish, waves like teeth, her hungry mortal brine.

And a voice came And a voice said

MAGNIFY MY EYE MAGNIFY MY EYE MAGNIFY MY SURFACES CAPACITY FOR BEAUTY

or it rides us like a torrent. Blurs and fastens, flesh to seconds. Just look at your veins. In vespertine woods, I tried to read moss by hand. There's something laconic about green that I need.

Lover, let the morning slow time through the branches.

For the last minute to turn home. By heart He knows the tilt and decline of each field, His own faulty predictions. The well Hoards its shadow while a raw haze gluts

With harvest, with guessing rains, presses As the temple and wrist. The pastures, tired Of abiding, begin to burn. Gold takes over, Loose, unguarded. Cows stay deep

In the chafe of underbush; reckless leaves shawl The edges, unaware of the sap that will send them down.

Blades of aging and magnetic August grass pull at their fruits harsh winds pass through insects fading like light

With shiny, green and rounded sounds I tumble exorbitantly into a human being

At night the vast soaring waters rise around the island where I am

And I want to see you who turned your back your clear outlines so deeply etched that even my sleep is too wide for just one Come into it!

A sun-patched leaf sails alone toward September singing something I can't hear only a cool humming— The Loneliness gives off your returning

There's not enough room for me in the wind that seized the leaf —you don't know where you are here, how far

You walk around as though split into many little white shimmering guests that rest in a dilapidated house, not spoken to the wood of its lumber too tired to speak using the heavy bodies of strangers as they tighten around their smiles

The house wants to enter them! Lean on their foreheads, listen, belong

What more to wrestle? What else to woo? Close, door. Close, petal. Human eye, you close too.

The light works at turning itself down, down, and the shapes up. Defining everything it isn’t. Maybe you first typed evening for everything, so it was. Spot of time between day and night. Golden hour, dark coming on at any minute, his book in your lap, cicadas in the original surround sound— so deafening you almost don’t hear them. That’s how surrounded you are. You watch the apricot light shift a tree toward you, slowly. Foregrounding, you think. The tulip poplar’s leaves sharpen, misshapen hands discernible from those of oaks and maples. The light presses the poplar’s strange black leaves into your eyes. Then the outlines of houses, scalloped wings of bats, shadow neighbors walking their shadow dogs. You watch, in real time, soft light hardening landscape to silhouette: spots of time falling darker than the pages. Everything recedes but you at the age you are, age you won’t be long, and the light as pale and sweet as stone fruit, and the trees becoming more sure of themselves, becoming edgier—and what else? Nothing else. More? says the world. And your open eyes answer more.

How beautiful is the white corn, I husk it, I grind it. Very beautiful, my white corn.

How beautiful is the red corn, I gather it and make fine meal, I am glad doing this. Very beautiful, my red corn.

How beautiful is the black corn, I give it to my father, To my mother, I give it to my child. Very beautiful, the black corn.

How beautiful is the mottled corn, Like the sky with little clouds, I eat it looking at the sky. Very beautiful, my mottled corn.

When the morning stars sang together and the sons of God shouted for joy when the planet appeared in the sky a blue-green jewel I was down there in my purple dress beside a river there were thousands of us flowers life all around us so incredible the mother of all rock concerts

We have arrived said the dog scratching behind his ear after scrambling down a hill millions of years long we hail you and we bring you messages from your own past for we have the same body heat the same animal hungers as you dear friend the same soul beaming through our eyes

Who, even in heaven, wouldn’t want to wear, for awhile, such a seed-face

and brave spine a coat of leaves with so many pockets— and who wouldn’t want

to stand, for a summer day, in the hot fields, in the lonely country of the wild-haired corn?

This much I know, When I see the bright stars of their faces, when I’m strolling nearby,

I grow soft in my speech, and soft in my thoughts, and I remember how everything will be everything else, by and by.

Shadows lengthen across green fields. Chill evening air reminds us earth's wheel forever turns,

spirals to new knowing.