Lesson in the Scientific Method
Beginning with a Line by Ezra Pound
Beginning with a Sentence by C.P. Dadant, First Lessons in Beekeeping
Beginning with a Line by Jackson Mac Low
Dispersing Surface
Ending with a Passage from Exodus
All things that are found on the earth go by the names of elements of natural [bodies].
—Carl Linnaeus
Each art must use its tools; each soul its body.
—Aristotle
Beginning with a Line from Exodus
And daubed it with slime
and pitch, and put the child therein.
A particular pitch, a daring
daub, he floated
among the cradles,
he floated to. Remember
the bodies
and a bauble, selved
with slime and pitch.
The child floated to.
Sinecured
to false heavenly, a birth
mark. To be a
possibility therein, pirated
pitch, a version.
Locusts come later; now,
he looks like someone’s
child there among
the rushes. To be
daubed, appear as
what he’s done.
Coast Live Oak
The oak has a language in it.
A buzz, a veiling buzz
insists on the I wish.
If you wish, the oak is buzzing, not
from swarming, simply alarming,
the dogs inflecting
inside their boxes and chains.
Listen, listen through.
I have lost the I have.
I carry a card to unlock forbiddens,
a silent card that screams.
In the true heart of Sunday
the grass reforms its composite
self, screaming menace,
claimed in substrate,
the step-
child of the Chronicler.
It won’t speak grammatically.
It will impose green throughout
and lie down for the mower again.
(She is remembered
only in daydreams, never
in speech, never around the students,
never at the ballpark while the players
trot the bases before the game.)
These flat recollections of events
rarely feel like living.
And these children
bombing and standing beneath bombs.
This secretary,
these defenses
and this televised citizenry.
This oak and its technicolor translation.
Hayward Marshlands
Star was darting, prying specs of light along levees. Hear me here tomorrow and the next day, get the body in place. And everything that follows: calf, nape, and small. Let the bodies be assembled along levees, let them make salt.
Past the recycling plant, past the blasted shoreline. In the broken made world, words fall between us.
Airplanes on their southern approach to Oakland, concrete wind, a grey sheet. Shy and pneumatic, the distance between shore and shore. The glance can’t fix underwater, even in the shallows. When I knew you best, you were crying straight, but usually you were darting and masking. Hear me tomorrow in the red marsh grass. We will agree, and the water will be different, slightly on the surface and slightly underneath, driftwood.
Beginning with a Line by Rilke
Just once; no more
The ash
And its competent leaves
Just once
Above the wetland
Once the ridge
Laden, no more
Fog as flower
No more
The baying Holsteins
How the sun
Closes, happy
The ash, happy
The holsteins no more
Heron are you happy
Heron