"…scientific thought consists in following as
closely as may be the actual and entangled lines
of force as they pulse through things."
— Ernest Fenollosa

I notice man sees horse grazes grass grows itself.

Wind blows seeding grass sends hay scent wafts with air through valley.

Valley funnels day breeze upstream points east breathes hay-scent air lifts moisture.

Chill makes droplet holds pollen seeds droplet grows chill.

Drop pulls earth pulls drop drops itself.

Drops join one another wet soil grows grass blooms itself.

Seeds seed grass greens valley holds me/man/horse/soil grass swells all.

All swallows one drinks pollen discolors eyelid blinks itself.

— after Richard Hugo

No one will remember this flooded-out
town built on sucking mud, ringed now
by graveyards and Christmas farms
treed so thickly the ground dies black.
Cedar root-wads heaved up as windfalls
reveal hairbrushes tangled in the grass,
brown glass whiskey flasks, a bent washtub,
two blue translucent insulators. Waste.
Trickling between piles of debris a black-
water creek smells of sulfur where flowers
rot. Beyond the pale there is no still life –
only wire heads, a plaster heart, mud-splattered
rigs, Corvairs, a rusted road grader. Certainly
the blind man knows something of shade
& linoleum, & where Borax is dispensed
in men’s rooms tactile as peeled garlic
or irony; an exit stenciled on despairing bone-
white ceramics. Yet overhead, the noonday
sun still turns a flying crow’s beak silver.