Simple Sad Serious Things

I return!
Now with institutional support for my weirdness.
I return older,
filled out and fleshed out
by the wave action of hundreds of walks
like today's
where the sad clarinet solos of November's wind
through the naked tree trunks
point to sad simple serious things
like the weight of the ground
on this farm
and the way the moss grows on every rock,
the way the ground is tidewrack
and how the cold gathers us about it
in flushed faces
blood defending us. And let us have homecoming
in the heaviness of the world
(the things August misses).
in the thousandfold dens,
the hiding places of the creatures of winter sleep.
Let us look on it, or feel it
but really
let me do it just by myself.
Let me grow the beard, for now I know
it emphasizes the diamond drill stare
with which I approach this panorama
of clouds, of breezes, of living water,
the way I approach the disorder of the world,
the leaves between the trees slicked down by the rain.
It is quiet here
and there are no publishers to impress--
only the ego-shadow push and pull
with each coming night and dawn.
All I have left is my raft chockablock with images--
the temptation of St. Anthony.
collages of my interests,
and the songs that won't go away,
that insist on rising to higher registers
my voice can't follow.
We have last night's dreams
cloying subtly under the breath,
but really
we have the death throes of the ekstatis of summer
and the birth of winter balance,
its heaviness coming on the wind.

Consider: "other voices in the inner narrator. Tyranny by influence."