Here's a section from chapter 4 ("Ghost Dance") of Grassblade Light.


2


Air swirls counter-clockwise
through the pinetops. A ghost
of summer waltzing once,
twice. In July. Eyes

focus your line. Meridian
out of cold nowhere. Wide-
open hollow. Prairie
spaces. Grass, clouds, wind -

everyone broken with, and left behind.
The love that didn't work out right.
The long dirge. Prison on your heart,
like an infant Moses-mote wound

around. Life-in-death bit of death-in-life.
Not a matter of temperament only -
seasonal, private (an image of DiMaggio
wholly imaginary, say - an airy, Roman leaf

of Marilyn mirage) - whirls in the dark
backwater - a light beam. Leaves, wrecks
all behind us now (stage-struck).
Spirits were. Have done their work.

I'm a man, the Sioux man said to me
in the Lincoln Nebraska bus terminal
a quarter of a century ago. Soul
shows where spirit and body

leave no shadow - noon, gnomon.
And the grain scrapes like a seed
underfoot. Drifter, water moccasin.
Part with eternity now, my son, my son.


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