olympic
Hurricane Ridge
On second sight, the mountains aren’t all
They’re piled up to be. What were
Below the mist–encircled crowns of tall
And craggy kings of old, and burrs
Of firs-de-lys thick on their velvet cowls,
Above are blown away: the fir
To sigh and sway in solitary hours
As patternless as ever,
The mists to fall and break upon the bare
Bright shoulders of the ridge, and words
To end unthought–of in the thinning air,
Though understood to go unheard.
Highwire after Frank O’Hara
Well I’m balanced this morning on the corner of
3rd St. and Pike watching buses buzz by, the electric
buses that is, as the others don’t buzz. Though actually
these don’t either, much, it’s the wires overhead
that are bouncing and buzzing
no it’s the spits of
chicken and lamb at the Market turning, burning
no it’s the grate at the top of the hill over
flowing with the taste of last night’s rain as it
drains all the way to the Sound
no
it’s the buses buzzing after all to and from on 3rd St.
and elsewhere I presume I wouldn’t know
because instead
I’m balanced on the edge of the curb and imagining
views from a seat right up close to the front by
a window or, giving that up to someone who actually
knows how to pay for their fare, from the seat at the
middle where the bus bends and buzzes on its wires
overhead while
all the while Puget Sound makes its churn
and the ferries sneak in and all of Seattle buzzes in turn.
To Be Intelligent after Marianne Moore
is to be bored
I’d think,
and then to have a hint
in every pore
and chink
of your arms! Pressed against
glass, leant forward,
blinking
in the dark water’s glint,
seemingly more
large pink
barnacle now than an
animal, coarse,
you shrink
inward and so intent
to take a form
you think
will outlast our interest,
hold quite still. More
preening
urchins and otters, bent–
–neck seabirds (poor
things) think
if at all but to spend
short lives adored,
& succeed
in forgetting they’re pent
here so far from
the sea.