when spring comes, my poems get longer and longer.

Henryetta is trying to pay attention on the 12:15 train

approaching afternoon in the firstclass car I speed through humped willows
and sagged tennis nets used cars slumped barns and busted windows
security cameras and stunted elms and parishioners filing churchward
and a whole field of jersey cows sleeping in the sun
on hills that urge wheels on and catch them again
shale dyed electric blue raised pools and filth-caked barbeques
and buds beginning red as lipstick tubes
we blunder through lumberyards and past a house I saw
on an island in the middle of the sea
which is mirror-flat and white on this fat
afternoon…the polarized rainbow of the train
window and the pocked up highway barrier
that guides the trucks along even when they can’t
see it and the hum of the powerplants with their two ton pipes thicker than the span of a man or ten
men the river again shopfronts
and crabgrass and willowvines dry wires
waiting for leaves to bust out and I’m waiting
too—for you and your dull root that catches me even when it ought
not—Sam when I think of you my heart pays attention –
someone astroturfed their roof someone laid out a plot of earth waiting for it to sprout someone knocked over a highway sign someone left out a lobster trap
at which a few swans laugh and Klaff’s Decorative Hardware is framed by
a decorative software of blossoms
who who who who who who is speaking so loudly about their
lost dollars when every minute new trees are supplanting the last ones and new
roofs slope down at me each leading to its own neat
chimney and everywhere mounds of dust
and someday the vines will reach
up to the tracks and my books will revert to pulp
a dam lets the water down uniform as hair
on a schoolgirl’s forehead—power is rising up out of this black river power is rising up out of these black
branches power is opening opening
opening itself
there is a man walking by a river I see him for a moment between two wires
and hungry stretches of road and yellow gossamer
flowers and stationsigns we flash
past express, and everywhere lumber ossifiying in the sun and fedex
warehouses and wrecked baseball diamonds
Sam will you forgive me if I only want to write poems
will you forgive me if I could follow the stream I see deep in the woods and not
come out and write poems as I go in the mud with my hands and my knees
Sam will you forgive me if all I desire is to sit in that deserted
boat and peer into the windows of darkened houses
counting the threads in their carpets and the books on their shelves
I want to write with my body and thrill in my soul
If only I can pay
attention a raised pool filled with lilies if only I can pay
attention a damp holly a sea of ground pines a store
selling signs I am trying to pay attention
I am ending my poem as the train ends moving into the heart of the city
for miles hungry silver roofs drink up the sun and burn
baby if you help me I swear I will pay attention
and filling my mouth with praise I will write til I die