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is as if all time had never been,

      Or universe or sun or moon or simple morning light.

      Their tragedy was mute and blind, and so remains. Our sight?

      Yes, ours? To know now what we are.

      But think of it, then choose—now, which?

      Born to raw Earth, inhabiting a scene

      And all of it, no sooner viewed, erased, gone blind

      As if these miracles had never been.

      Vast circlings of sounding light, of fire and frost,

      And all so quickly seen then quickly lost?

      Or us, in fragile flesh, with God’s new eyes

      That lift and comprehend and search the skies?

      We watch the seasons drifting in the lunar tide

      And know the years, remembering what’s died.

      Oh, yes, perhaps some birds some nights

      Have felt Orion rise and tuned their flights

      And turned southward

      Because star-charts were printed in their sweet genetic dreams—

      Or so it seems.

      But, see? But really see and know?

      And, knowing, want to touch those fires,

      To grow until the mighty brow of man Lamarckian-tall

      Knocks earthquakes, striking moon,

      Then Mars, then Saturn’s rings;

      And, growing, hope to show

      All other beasts just how

      To fly with dreams instead of ancient wings.

      So, think on this: we’re first! the only ones

      Whom God has honored with his rise of suns.

      For us as gifts Aldebaran, Centauri, homestead Mars.

      Wake up, God says. Look there. Go fetch.

      The stars. Oh, Lord, much thanks. The stars!

This Attic Where the Meadow Greens

      This attic where the meadow greens

      Now keeps itself a world between two worlds,

      One world of weather, one of blood and dream.

      Its architectural scheme there high above

      Was to make heaps and sprawls of silent time

      Abide it there to know a slower beat

      Than any river street or dogprint lawn.

      Here yawns lost yestermorn

      When loss and death were yet unborn

      And fear, locked in the womb, stopped up its breath

      To let it whisper forth some other year.

      A gardener lived here once—

      My grandpapa whose notion

      Was to tend and seed a rooftop sea of grass

      And garret-mind it under glass—

      A private lawn, each blade an hour, minute, second

      Burning bright

      Where boys and dogs might meet to fight, or gambol on,

      And smile.

      And all the while poor beasts below

      In stifled traffics come and go.

      So, late and drowned in night

      Or striking midriff day,

      The old man bent to rattletap croquet

      And marched between the arching hoops

      And found it clever to knock brightly colored balls

      That comet-ran forever down our hidden sky.

      In meadow-attic, with fanatic skill and ease

      He touched to kill wrong destinies with games.

      Full joys, fine aims he planned and played above the trees.

      Death’s sneeze? was corked! And if dark came some future day

      He would be challenged to delay awhile,

      Take up croquet, seize mallet,

      Stop balloting for night,

      Stand bright, know day,

      Whack blazing orb-sun, rolling fire,

      Lose at croquet to Gramps,

      The champ of champs who sent dark down and out away from town.

      Toward other years and hours

      When high lawn brown and sunk to seed knew weed for flowers.

      The games went on till I was ten.

      Death, back again, brought grimmer tools

      And played Gramps by some older, stricter rules and won.

      In mid-June’s bright-noon sun

      The croquet stopped in full mid-scene.

      We buried old man, mallets, orbs, and hoops in that high green.

      That’s years ago.

      We rarely visit now in attic meadows where you’d need a plow

      To find his treasuring of bones

      Or make a measuring of where the ancient joys

      Still play themselves on air

      For boys.

      I only know on days like these

      I hear his rushing run above the trees

      Where his ghost tells me what life means

      From attic where the meadow greens.

Abandon in Place

       Three elegies written on visiting the deserted rocket pads at Cape Canaveral

      1

      Abandon in Place.

      No Further Maintenance Authorized.

      Abandon. Turn away your face.

      No more the mad high wanderings of thought

      You once surmised. Let be!

      Wipe out the stars. Put out the skies.

      What lived as center to our souls

      Now dies—so what?—now dies.

      What once as arrow to our thoughts

      Which target-ran in blood-fast flow

      No longer flies.

      Cut off the stars. Slam shut the teeming skies.

      Abandon in Place.

      Burn out your eyes.

      2

      Where firebirds once

      Now daubers caulk the seams;

      Where firewings flew

      To blueprint young men’s dreams,

      Now warbler here and osprey weave their nests

      From laces lost from off a spaceman’s

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