Wild Oats

Watching the first sunlight

touch the tops of the palms

what could I ask

All the beads have gone

from the old string

and the string does not miss them

The daughters of memory

never pronounce

their own names

In the language of heaven

the angel said

go make your own garden

I dream I am here

in the morning

and the dream is its own time

Looking into the old well

I see my own face

then another behind it

There I am

morning clouds

in the east wind

No one is in the garden

the autumn daisies

have the day to themselves

All night in the dark valley

the sound of rain arriving

from another time

September when the wind

drops and to us it seems

that the days are waiting

I needed my mistakes

in their own order

to get me here

Here is the full moon

brining us

silence

I call that singing bird my friend

though I know nothing else about him

and he does not know I exist

What is it that I keep forgetting

now I have lost it again

right here

I have to keep telling myself

why I am going away again

I do not seem to listen

In my youth I believed in somewhere else

I put faith in travel

now I am becoming my own tree