from Kinship IV This centre holds And spreads, Sump and seedbed, A bag of waters And a melting grave. The mothers of autumn Sour and sink, Ferments of husk and leaf Deepen their ochres. Mosses come to a head, Heather unseeds, Brackens deposit Their bronze. This is the vowel of earth Dreaming its root In flowers and snow, Mutation of wathers And seasons, A windfall composing The floor it rots into. I grew out of all this Like a weeping willow Inclined to The appetites of gravity. Poem reprinted with the permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux
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