[in memoriam: the Montano Road cottonwood,
cut down for a useless bridge in December 1995]

Outside the kitchen window on a sleepless night,
I see that deluge of bark
   on the endless cottonwood in the garden
      is so much more than me
         I have to move my head
to move my eyes across it.
It takes the same surprising effort
   to believe
      the changes that I see
         are more
than my feelings.
So I move my whole self to the ditch shore grasses,
   rich in willows, nightshade, black-eyed Susans,
      the deep ocean grass of weeds
         Swaying in the aromatic skies
for miles of walking
through the backlands near the river,
   moving my whole self down deep arcades
      of hidden passageways of trees, serene
         as wind eddies far
from lightning in the west.
These paths of curiosity and high repose,
   I move along
      in foresight,
         which feels too much
like memory,
are murdered now
   by herbicides and highways.
      As surely
         as I will die,

all the ditch weeds and their blossoms,
the yellow primrose moon weeds, rag weeds, morning glories,
   nettles, tumbleweeds and creepers,
      all will be
         deprived of their nature
as a wilderness inside
the regimented glade
   of exiled city space.
      this garden’s past,
         which is right now
is as lost
as the music singers played
   to Homer’s words
      in a time that might as well have never have been,
         so covered up it is in stories, lies,
revisions, and the blankness of forgetting.
So with my life of days
   and meals and mornings,
      books and talk
         and all sweet and cool and mellow
times
so dense I don’t remember
   more than a day or two of it,
      only
         that it all has been.
            So here I am on the ditch bank,
This floating garden of weeds and worlds
about to be bulldozed
   for a bridge,
      not the whole garden razed
         just its
invisible integrity,
its economy of place
   replaced like wisps of grasses
      changed
         into indiscriminate fire.
And there is nothing I can do
but see the garden
   as a lover would
      in the only seconds left,
         seeing to preserve in sight
what no one
will have known
   to remember,
      moving my whole self
         so at least
I will be
more than me,
   me plus the world plus my effort
      --love in never
         a total waste.

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