Friends, will you bear with me today

For I have awakened

From a dream in which a robinMade with its shabby wings a kind of veil

Behind which it shimmied and stomped something from the south

Of spain, its breast aflare

Looking me dead in the eye

From the branch that grew into my window

Coochie-cooing my chin

The bird shuffling its little talons left, then right

While the leaves bristled

Against the plaster wall, two of them drifting

Onto my blanket while the bird

Opened and closed its wings like a matador

Giving up on murder

Jutting its beak, turning a circle

And flashing, again

The ruddy bombast of its breast

By which I knew upon waking

It was telling me

In no uncertain terms

To bellow forth the tubas and sousaphones

The whole rusty brass band of gratitude

Not quite dormant in my belly

It said so in a human voice

"Bellow forth"

And who among us could ignore such odd

And precise counsel?

Hear ye! Hear ye! I am here

To holler that I have hauled tons by which I don′t mean lots

I mean tons of cowshit

And stood ankle deep in swales of maggots

Swirling the spent beer grains

The brewery man was good enough to dump off

Holding his nose, for they smell very bad

But make the compost writhe giddy and lick its lips

Twirling dung with my pitchfork

Again and again

With hundreds and hundreds of other people

We dreamt an orchard this way

Furrowing our brows

And hauling our wheelbarrows

And sweating through our shirts

And less than a year later there was a party

At which trees were sunk into the well-fed earth

One of which, a liberty apple, after being watered in

Was tamped by a baby barefoot

With a bow hanging in her hair

Biting her lip in her joyous work

And friends this is the realest place I know

It makes me squirm like a worm I am so grateful

You could ride your bike there

Or roller skate or catch the bus

There is a fence and a gate twisted by hand

There is a fig tree taller than you in Indiana

It will make you gasp

It might make you want to stay alive even, thank you

And thank you

For not taking my pal when the engine

Of his mind dragged him

To swig fistfuls of Xanax and a bottle or two of booze

And thank you for taking my father

A few years after his own father went down thank you

Mercy, mercy, thank you

For not smoking meth with your mother

Oh thank you, thank you

For leaving and for coming back

And thank you for what inside my friends'

Love bursts like a throng of roadside goldenrod

Gleaming into the world

Likely hauling a shovel with her

Like one named Aralee ought

With hands big as a horse′s

And who, like one named Aralee ought

Will laugh time to time 'til the juice

Runs from her nose oh

Thank you

For the way a small thing's wail makes

The milk or what once was milk

In us gather into horses

Huckle-buckling across a field

And thank you, friends, when last spring

The hyacinth bells rang

And the crocuses flaunted

Their upturned skirts and a quiet roved

The beehive which when I entered

Were snugged two or three dead

Fist-sized clutches of bees between the frames

Almost clinging to one another

This one′s tiny head pushed

Into another′s tiny wing

One's forelegs resting on another′s face

The translucent paper of their wings fluttering

Beneath my breath and when

A few dropped to the frames beneath

Honey and after falling down to cry

Everything's glacial shine

And thank you, too, and thanks

For the corduroy couch I have put you on

Put your feet up here′s a light blanket

A pillow, dear one

For I can feel this is going to be long

I can't stop

My gratitude, which includes, dear reader

You, for staying here with me

For moving your lips just so as I speak

Here is a cup of tea I have spooned honey into it

And thank you the tiny bee′s shadow

Perusing these words as I write them

And the way my love talks quietly

When in the hive

So quietly, in fact, you cannot hear her

But only notice barely her lips moving

In conversation thank you what does not scare her

In me, but makes her reach my way thank you the love

She is which hurts sometimes and the time

She misremembered elephants

In one of my poems which, oh, here

They come, garlanded with morning glory and wisteria

Blooms, trombones all the way down to the river

Thank you the quiet

In which the river bends around the elephant's

Solemn trunk, polishing stones, floating

On its gentle back

The flock of geese flying overhead

And to the quick and gentle flocking

Of men to the old lady falling down

On the corner of fairmount and 18th, holding patiently

With the softest parts of their hands

Her cane and purple hat

Gathering for her the contents of her purse

And touching her shoulder and elbow

Thank you the cockeyed court

On which in a half-court 3 vs 3 we oldheads

Made of some runny-nosed kids

A shambles, and the 61-year-old

After flipping a reverse lay-up off a back door cut

From my no-look pass to seal the game

Ripped off his shirt and threw punches at the gods

And hollered at the kids to admire the pacemaker's scar

Grinning across his chest thank you

The glad accordion′s wheeze

In the chest thank you the bagpipes

Thank you to the woman barefoot in a gaudy dress

For stopping her car in the middle of the road

And the tractor trailer behind her, and the van behind it

Whisking a turtle off the road

Thank you god of gaudy

Thank you paisley panties

Thank you the organ up my dress

Thank you the sheer dress you wore kneeling in my dream

At the creek′s edge and the light

Swimming through it the koi kissing

Halos into the glassy air

The room in my mind with the blinds drawn

Where we nearly injure each other

Crawling into the shawl of the other's body

Thank you for saying it plain

Fuck each other dumb

And you, again, you, for the true kindness

It has been for you to remain awake

With me like this, nodding time to time

And making that noise which I take to mean

Yes, or, I understand, or, please go on

But not too long, or, why are you spitting

So much, or, easy tiger

Hands to yourself I am excitable

I am sorry I am grateful

I just want us to be friends now, forever

Take this bowl of blackberries from the garden

The sun has made them warm

I picked them just for you I promise

I will try to stay on my side of the couch

And thank you the baggie of dreadlocks I found in a drawer

While washing and folding the clothes of our murdered friend

The photo in which his arm slung

Around the sign to "The trail of silences" thank you

The way before he died he held

His hands open to us for coming back

In a waft of incense or in the shape of a boy

In another city looking

From between his mother′s legs

Or disappearing into the stacks after brushing by

For moseying back in dreams where

Seeing us lost and scared

He put his hand on our shoulders

And pointed us to the temple across town

And thank you to the man all night long

Hosing a mist on his early-bloomed

Peach tree so that the hard frost

Not waste the crop, the ice

In his beard and the ghosts

Lifting from him when the warming sun

Told him sleep now thank you

The ancestor who loved you

Before she knew you

By smuggling seeds into her braid for the long

Journey, who loved you

Before he knew you by putting

A walnut tree in the ground, who loved you

Before she knew you by not slaughtering

The land thank you

Who did not bulldoze the ancient grove

Of dates and olives

Who sailed his keys into the ocean

And walked softly home who did not fire, who did not

Plunge the head into the toilet, who said stop

Don't do that who lifted some broken

Someone up who volunteered

The way a plant birthed of the reseeding plant

Is called a volunteer, like the plum tree

That marched beside the raised bed

In my garden, like the arugula that marched

Itself between the blueberries

Nary a bayonet, nary an army, nary a nation

Which usage of the word volunteer

Familiar to gardeners the wide world

Made my pal shout, "Oh!" And dance

And plunge his knuckles

Into the lush soil before gobbling two strawberries

And digging a song from his guitar

Made of wood from a tree someone maybe planted, thank you

Thank you zinnia, and gooseberry, rudbeckia

And pawpaw, ashmead′s kernel, cockscomb

And scarlet runner, feverfew and lemonbalm

Thank you knitbone and sweetgrass and sunchoke

And false indigo whose petals stammered apart

By bumblebees good Lord please give me a minute

And moonglow and catkin and crookneck

And painted tongue and seedpod and johnny jump-up

Thank you what in us rackets glad

What gladrackets us

And thank you, too, this knuckleheaded heart, this pelican heart

This gap-toothed heart flinging open its gaudy maw

To the sky, oh clumsy, oh bumblefucked

Oh giddy, oh dumbstruck

Oh rickshaw, oh goat twisting

Its head at me from my peach tree's highest branch

Balanced impossibly gobbling the last fruit

Its tongue working like an engine

A lone sweet drop tumbling by some miracle

Into my mouth like the smell of someone I′ve loved

Heart like an elephant screaming

At the bones of its dead

Heart like the lady on the bus

Dressed head to toe in gold, the sun

Shivering her shiny boots, singing

Erykah Badu to herself

Leaning her head against the window

And thank you to the way my father one time came back in a dream

By plucking the two cables beneath my chin

Like a bass fiddle's strings

And played me until I woke singing

No kidding, I was singing and smiling

Thank you, thank you

Stumbling into the garden where

The juneberry's flowers had burst open

Like the bells of french horns, the lily

My mother and I planted oozed into the air

The bazillion ants labored in their earthen workshops

Below, the collard greens waved in the wind

Like the sails of ships, and the wasps

Swam in the mint bloom′s viscous swill

And you, again you, for hanging tight, dear friend

I know I can be long-winded sometimes

I want so badly to rub the sponge of gratitude

Over every last thing, including you, which, yes, it′s awkward

The suds in your ear and armpit, the little sparkling gems

Slipping into your eye soon it will be over

Which is precisely what the child in my dream said

Holding my hand, pointing at the roiling sea and the sky

Hurtling our way like so many buffalo

Who said it's much worse than we think

And sooner, to whom I said

No duh child in my dreams, what do you think

This singing and shuddering is

What this screaming and reaching and dancing

And crying is, other than loving

What every second goes away?

Goodbye, I mean to say

And thank you every day