Shaped barely by the
Moon’s pale serving
Of a another daylight
In a chair
A field
Laid bare in the
Solemn custody
Of mountains

In this kindled country
I cannot help myself

I cannot hear a living
Thing against

The bellowing

Atomic threat of the
Atomic threat I fear
Not death
But my heart would
Burst to cease
My daughters
Having never seen America

Pedestrian attempt to slay
The former president elect
And everyone was wrong
And everyone correct
The last first and first last
Chance to jump the flaming
Schooner or mutiny
Astonishing
A furious returning

To America

To raise the meek
The hurt
Yea even the unhungry poor

A national compassion

Even love

Every tongue and folk so
Equal in Thy fielding love

But Lord
I know
Thy Word

And see
No clean agreed end

To the computer
The mongering
Of whores
Of war and rumors of it

Mock of God
God of Mammon
Promise hollow
As the promiser

The bag the bag
The industries
Banal immystery

Of greed

Soil spoiled bountifully
Feed unfit for beasts
Unseemly in the noneyes
Of the singlest cell and all
In unmanageable excess
In this poverse

Age
Of

Orbs over suburbia
Intelligences in the sea

Artificially
Of consequence

The unassuming
Cancer chemicals
Forever and whatever

Hushed addictions
Honored minds
Ranking snakes
In secret combination

Against the Innocent

Lord, in this incessant fall

Wouldst Thou spare the little ones
Would we be spared by them
Changed by their detergent hearts

Dear God,

Suffer them to suffer
Less or if not less 
Then see them
Armed with wholer minds

A shield for sugar arrows

I would be more
Childlike
I would change!

Yea in Thy courage
I would be a martyr Lord
I would drink the whole supply
Of fluoride in Thy porcelain name
Improve the living quality
By some depressing margin

If that would make
Thee happy
I would gladly drink

I would die a handsome lamb

Yet
Already paid
In Blood pristine
The ransom
Fallen distance
Closed in
Infinite
Atonement

Time made tissue
In thy Grace

Forgive me, for
I incessantly forget

The Resurrected Christ!
The Lamb

So leaning on my own
Misunderstanding
My unproven
Foppish hands

And will He come?
Yea He will come

And at the second
Of His coming

I will sparkle

Walking bootless
Through the levellings
Just to wash His feet
And by His blessing
Skipping plains
And foothills leaping
Gathering His diverged sheep
Gathering myself
Back
To the Good Green Shepherd
Joy ever unfolding
In the stenches of the fold

And I am but
The least I am but
Here Lord is

My lung
My other lung
My brittle mind
And geographic tongue

My love of
Beauty
Truth
Unrelatively plain

My poems
Leafed and stupid
This one overwrought
And so political

So what
So long

My swagger
My symbols
My boots

My forthcoming nothing

Yea all upon the altar
Wrapped up in that gorgeous flag

I raised as a boy
Replacing it when worn
Or torn by wind
Or dragged upon the ground
Over which it waved

I still know how to fold it

1.    Halve it lengthwise twice
2.    Bring the striped corner
       Of the folded edge
       To the open edge
       To form a triangle
3.    Turn inward the outer point
       Parallel with the open edge
       To form a second triangle
4.    Fold the length remaining
       In a final triangle until
       The outside shows
       A blue field clean with stars

Perhaps I misremember
I remember most
The reverence

And now
Returning

Lord

I would give Thee all
Walk all ways Thou wouldst
I would walk the Earth content
But not unlonging for America

America!

This strange and swooning land
Thy children living here
Like mice
Americans
My darlings
My love so poorly tendered
So profane at times
And yet

Beloved

Beyond my
Self captivity

Beyond the slavish
Rhetoric and beer

I am
In America

The animals
American
Landscapes and
Presiding clouds
Pretending likeness
Seizing quiet and
The all life
Singing
In Thy solar tongue

Thy language plain
Thy grammar just

Thy consciousness
Begotten

Lord

Let me know
Thy luster

As Thou art perfect
Make me perfect

And if it be Thy will
Let it happen in America

And tomorrow

As I walk down
The throat of August

And confront a lizard
Long and sheening in the sun
His shorn tail slow returning

Young and undeformed
Behold            
A tiny tail grows back

Does he even know
Does he know this is the place

Does he know he is
The hope
The proof
The soft and blinking
Elegance of thy plan                                                                     

                                        OF HAPPINESS