Sojourns in the Parallel World by Denise Levertov

We live our lives of human passions, cruelties, dreams, concepts, crimes and the exercise of virtue in and beside a world devoid of our preoccupations, free from apprehension—though affected, certainly, by our actions. A world parallel to our own though overlapping. We call it 'Nature: only reluctantly admitting ourselves to be 'Nature' too. Whenever we lose track of our own obsessions, our self-concerns, because we drift for a minute, an hour even, of pure (almost pure) response to that insouciant life: cloud, bird, fox, the flow of light, the dancing pilgrimage of water, vast stillness of spellbound ephemerae on a lit windowpane, animal voices, mineral hum, wind conversing with rain, ocean with rock, stuttering of fire to coal—then something tethered in us, hobbled like a donkey on its patch of gnawed grass and thistles, breaks free. No one discovers just where we've been, when we're caught up again into our own sphere (where we must return, indeed, to evolve our destinies) —but we have changed, a little.

watching cnn

five more murders but first a yogert commercial with your fat fuck husband turning into JOhn Stamos drinking bud heavy with his fat fuck friends now a father and son go camping but not without a Apple touch pad nook deal reader so they can watch the fucking lorax when it rains now the politician is sorry for what he said an hour ago he wont say it again

Rolla MO

At a distance the Ozarks itch in me im not sophisticated im from Missouri a Siberian elm grows in almost every trailer park the moon light dripping thru its scraggly shit the downward spiral of defoliation and slime pause only for multiple domestic disturbances

Zen Crude-ism with Justin fyfe in Colorado

I felt more alive than ever when we dammed up that creek together smoked that shit done got lost up In Colorado you me dupree that corey kids dog and all the bears you dreamt of eating us alive almost every other night I cant place my finger on it spent half the day placing stones on slippery creek bed rerouting earth earth rerouting us silent water put together in action

an obituary for someone elses farm

using maps to decipher land for reference I use pivots no longer in existence dried up circles evaporated on outdated maps Im sending letters to dead farmers IN a dead mans office i find large pine cones boots maybe his seed corn caps everything still frozen in place like a shrine important notes and phone numbers no longer used on a disconnected phone these letters go unnoticed they wait in boxes or are sent to fraudulent land trusts forgotten by trusties

Four poems for Robin by Gary SNyder

Siwashing It Out Once in Suislaw Forest

I slept under rhododendron
All nightblossoms fell
Shivering on a sheet of cardboard
Feet stuck in my pack
Hands deepin my pockets
Barelyableto sleep.
I rememberedwhen we were in school
Sleeping together in a big warm bed
We were the youngest lovers
When we broke up we were still nineteen
Now our friends are married
You teachschool back east
I dont mind living this way
Green hills the long blue beach
But sometimes sleeping in the open
I think backwhen I had you.

A Spring Night in Shokoku-ji

Eight years ago this May
We walked under cherry blossoms
At night in an orchard in Oregon.
All that I wanted then
Is forgotten now, but you.
Here in the night
In a garden of the old capital
I feel the trembling ghost of Yugao
I remember your cool body
Naked under a summer cotton dress.

An Autumn Morning in Shokoku-ji

Last night watching the Pleiades,
Breath smoking in the moonlight,
Bitter memory like vomit
Choked my throat.
I unrolled a sleeping bag
On mats on the porch
Under thick autumn stars.
In dream you appeared
(Three times in nine years)
Wild, cold, and accusing.
I woke shamed and angry:
The pointless wars of the heart.
Almost dawn. Venus and Jupiter.
The first time I have
Ever seen them close.

December at Yase

You said, that October,
In the tall dry grass by the orchard
When you chose to be free,
"Again someday, maybe ten years."

After college I saw you
One time. You were strange.
And I was obsessed with a plan.

Now ten years and more have
Gone by: I've always known
where you were--
I might have gone to you
Hoping to win your love back.
You still are single.

I didn't.
I thought I must make it alone. I
Have done that.

Only in dream, like this dawn,
Does the grave, awed intensity
Of our young love
Return to my mind, to my flesh.

We had what the others
All crave and seek for;
We left it behind at nineteen.

I feel ancient, as though I had
Lived many lives.
And may never now know
If I am a fool
Or have done what my
karma demands.