with boundary stones , remove my shoes
lessen and from the sky
its galaxies and from the ground
soaked with tears it can't remember.
I bring you stones and the way back.
Robert B. Shaw
CLOUDSCAPE
To a man sick or in prison I imagine
clouds passing must be a comfort, bringing
rifts of distance into a room's sameness.
The June high pomp of their elephantine
processions, the autumn wind-disheveled
horse tails and manes tell the time of the realm.
Then there are all those protean tableaux
convincing to none but each expositor:
one man's duck is another man's dragon.
Only the other day I saw
Ely Cathedral serenely wandering east:
nobody else would have. Think of being
all things to all men , of having your silver
lining accepted all over as credit ,
of being above it all. They have it easy,
or so it seems from this bow-window where
I spend so much time following their maneuvers ,
overcome some days by so massive and blank
a longing that it takes minutes to remember
that I am almost never
ill
and always free to go .
THE FLOATER
They always used to say, demanding elders,
schoolmasters in manner or in fact,
that this boy was a hopeless drifter, lacked
