In 1967

Some called it the Summer of Love, & although the clustered,

Motionless leaves that overhung the streets looked the same

As ever, the same as they did every summer, in 1967,

Anybody with three dollars could have a vision.

And who wouldn’t want to know what it felt like to be

A cedar waxwing landing with a flutter of gray wings

In a spruce tree, & then disappearing into it,

For only three dollars? And now I know; its flight is ecstasy.

No matter how I look at it, I also now know that

The short life of a cedar waxwing is more pure pleasure

Than anyone alive can still be sane, & bear.

And remember, a cedar waxwing doesn’t mean a thing,

Qua cedar or qua waxwing, nor could it have earned

That kind of pleasure by working to become a better

Cedar waxwing. They’re all the same.

Show me a bad cedar waxwing, for example, & I mean

A really morally corrupted cedar waxwing, & you’ll commend

The cage they have reserved for you, resembling heaven.

Some people spent their lives then, having visions.

But in my case, the morning after I dropped mescaline

I had to spray Johnson grass in a vineyard of Thompson Seedless

My father owned—& so, still feeling the holiness of all things

Living, holding the spray gun in one hand & driving with the other,

The tractor pulling the spray rig & its sputtering motor—

Row after row, I sprayed each weed I found

That looked enough like Johnson grass, a thing alive that’s good

For nothing at all, with a mixture of malathion & diesel fuel,

And said to each tall weed, as I coated it with a lethal mist,

Dominus vobiscum, &, sometimes, mea culpa, until

It seemed boring to apologize to weeds, & insincere as well.

For in a day or so, no more than that, the weeds would turn

Disgusting hues of yellowish orange & wither away. I still felt

The bird’s flight in my body when I thought about it, the wing ache,

Lifting heaven, locating itself somewhere just above my slumped

Shoulders, & part of me taking wind. I’d feel it at odd moments

After that on those long days I spent shoveling vines, driving trucks

And tractors, helping swamp fruit out of one orchard

Or another, but as the summer went on, I felt it less and less.