NEHEMIAH GREW

john martone

samuddo / ocean 2012

NEHEMIAH GREW

Copyright 2012 john martone samuddo / ocean ISBN 978-1-300-01302-0

NEHEMIAH GREW

nehemiah grew Sceliphron caementarium that season more dust crossing clockwise (a little one) a coil lettuce (second crop) inner ear house-frame 1 x 1013 chicken wire junk man vihara

nehemiah grew
You too can be a plant, rooting without a nerve, turning to sun without thought, unselfishly spreading to harbor the crown of a robins nest or squirrels tabernacle, a woodwind in the void of your no-hearing, leaves surpassing sutras & fingerprints. You too, you too, those mourning dove kalavinkas sing from the lower branches, pondering your ten billion-fold seed dispersal the only questions which will it be samara, nut, drupe, berry, cottonwood tuft? Each of those billions the same as you, theres no death, no more blood, bloody incarnation, animal flesh. Remember how you once lived in trees, your own limbs those shady emulations holding on, wanting to be one? Then perhaps your next fall from those heights, breaking your neck, youll rise up the evolutionary ladder again as cherry or maple they all have more genes than homines sapientes, since thats our measure, and they dont count.

Sceliphron caementarium (mud dauber)

for jane & werner reichhold

books on his floor extension cords sweat streaming down

mud dauber circles a window-sash-home

all those lives lived alone mud dauber

12

anthropos lost in mud daubers nest chambers

spittle & dust mud dauber people

13

every generation comes to this house mud dauber

mud coming to life mud dauber

mud dauber wolf spiders cower in the cellar stairs

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that season

nothings left one morning

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watching one thing after another vanish

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spider you step out of each others way

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every thing slips away thats why the sea is full of tears

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air just came up with breath

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still breathing takes a life time to learn

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ghostly namely

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water thru yr fingers out of yr hands thats who

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no one namely loving kindness

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all those sub atom ic parti cles human bodies

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it all comes clear havent got eyes to see

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left yr laundry on the line overnight & the world didnt end

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cumulus queen annes lace that season

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railroad tracks thru those galaxies queen annes lace

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a mile-long train at dusk summer solstice

a mile-long train their dna

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lots of room for that freight train blowing thru his meditation

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one freight train after another & there he is w/ his flashlight

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you were born more than halfway there

diesel train horn then robin song how hop on

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dust settles on his writings now thats settled

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epigram epicycle epitaph epiphyte

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more dust

thats a robin this morning little ear-bones

bean poles conductors conducting photons

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bean poles pole beans his radiotele scope

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bean poles & knotted string youre no sailor bean poles & knotted string youre a sailor!

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one pole bean plant wants to go that way

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chromosomes just adrift in the sky

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a dumpster the genome

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no no that garden grew you

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didnt know gardens a star-map

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planting carrots more dust

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ball of string pocket knife on your own

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kitchen radio that ancient spring you stood on a chair

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crossing

out of nowhere back to nowhere she made a clay pot

far from the river still its a river

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cobwebs kayak too many limbs for one kayak

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that quiet threading a needle kayak

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the transit of venus in a yellow kayak

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kayak crossing the lake out of his mind

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clockwise

end of life entering a summer sweepstakes

all by themselves hands wash themselves

planting forgetting their names

they want to climb the beanpole clockwise

bindweed squash clockwise gene

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tendrils clockwise & this planet

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tendrils must be something in me that turns clockwise

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tendrils & ear canals

tendrils how sub atomic particles decay

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tendrils & fireflies turn the same way

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tendrils van goghs starry night

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right hand left hand yes youre tendrils vestige

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(a little one)

there you are single-celled garden-speck on microscope slide in focus swimming gone into all that sun

 thought that membrane already transparent then it dissolved

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a coil

grasses wither & why not you

coil of wire an animals tracks

those old days washing off under a hose

an old lesson disentangling garden hose

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lettuce (second crop)

crumbling earth over lettuce seeds see them then not at all

everythings planted in no time

its not yr world any more when ever was it

slow to get going this morning (all those dreams)

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dead oak a crow not yet

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his garden stubborn illusion

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inner ear

picking beans drying beans soaking beans planting beans

island garden garden island

a fallen fledgling amends the soil

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pole shape pole beans someone thought

sweet pea pods cloud less days

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gardening an ear turned to bird song

a garden snail quiets yr inner ear

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up & down in a garden balancing

yr bodys smallest joints listen in a garden

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pistil & stamens those inner ear sensors

yr inner ears oval window garden ants!

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tympanic membrane petal

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try weeding w/out a sound

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house-frame

the next room another world someone sails off

one world another world gladioli

just the house-frame left standing gladioli

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gladioli & religious statues a maritime sky

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same place every year gladioli dont remember

forget about flowers & dust the house

a wheel in the sky a clothesline

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underclothes sitting in front of a fan

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a wimple & bare men w/ shovels

a life of prayer & laundry buried in those mountains

82

1 x 1013

ten trillion cells of course its lonely

ten trillion cells now dont all talk at once!

ten trillion cells ten trillion cloud droplets

ten trillion cells look at that white pine

84

you try getting ten trillion cells out of bed

ten trillion cells for a little while

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twenty six letters or twenty or 3 lifes an alpha bet cloud

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quite a crowd to see thru ten trillion cells

ten trillion cells how on earth pulling weeds

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ten trillion cells picking string beans summer squash com pany!

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ten trillion cells now where did that dream go

89

imagine that ten trillion cells fall from a tree

ten trillion cells & blue berries!

90

chicken wire

planted them last week & what are they called

yr old age that molecule coming clear

a molecule tries itself out here you are

a spider thread thats all the visible spectrum

spider thread tendril molecular ghost

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his inescapable garden carbon rings

that invisible world a rabbit leaps thru his garden

peas tomatoes grapes the sun too that skin

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chicken wire not a wall around his garden organelles

this whole human body not one cell-wall!

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watering yr garden just listen

watering a garden counting

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way past yr garden screaming circular saw

just threw up chicken wire & called it a garden

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six-sided chicken-wire mesh carbon-rings

bindweed climbs in squash vines climb out

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it its another world under those squash leaves

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thumb over hose spraying water what becomes of us

99

wrapped in a per sonal chicken wire molecule you are

100

chicken are you chicken its just chicken wire

chicken wire wont stay up on its own

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o just step over that chicken wire

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a junk man

stringbeans climb a junkyard fence

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a midsummer middens

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summer solstice you are a junk man

a junk man picking all those string beans

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one piece of junk after another 10 fingers

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sort thru it all down to that molecule junk man

107

sweat spittle snot earwax tears you junk man

thought after thought a single bed junk man

108

all this junk & itll rain

all those past lives junk mans lost count

109

a junkyard his island

110

scrap paper too its all scrap paper

plastic wash tub rusted lag bolts

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vacuum tubes & the perfection of wisdom

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no good still worth saving

perfectly fine something to let go of

113

grimy exactly skin of it all

drunk all your life now an empty bottle

of course its a broken junkyard jizo

114

drunk or asleep yr whole life summer solstice

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he blows & blows an ant from his notebook

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eyes closed seeing sun fill a sickroom

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a blue snake chased him under that sky

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vihara

here is a door that doesnt lock

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whose shoes are whose at the back steps its poignant

120

feeding this body roots & stems river spinach

bodys a leaf too eating cooked leaves

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peach-slices people alone are helpless

122

fruit trees planted you wont be here

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window up there must be someones

window up there surely no ones

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using both hands to drink water

tears come to eyes at home

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a woods back there for another time

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two legs back & forth between two trees

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come & go same as the world

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