Saturday, October 30, 2010

you cannot make me


you cannot make me
believe

the miracle that makes
a bare tree

explode with ten-
thousand

leaves

I cannot accept
such poetry.

in all things


in all things
the effort
to merge

bird’s nest
woven with
spider legs

there to
inlay
the egg
shell

calligraphy
on the egg
            veil

ancient names
recorded thus.

in the long night


in the long night

root and rain

the first to join


moonlight frames windows

leaves spiral down

another layer               a blanket


a miracle         to die

aglow

and be forgotten.

Monday, October 25, 2010

as the lilacs break


as the lilacs break       the heart sings its memory
to forgive and find grace in forgiveness                      to find grace
in the way the wind breaks through the budding trees
how the infant suckles the lavender breast
with the stillness and focus of a sun-stroked pond

the heart remembers the elements of the changes
it remembers that morning when the wet fog
turned another key                 when you woke
and she was there waiting in her sleep for you
to wake her                 how in shadow she still shines.

this bracelet


this bracelet
love making love
a bracelet

                                    arms
                                    legs
                        threads
                        threaded

glass-eyed jewels
            interwoven

dress this night
for morning to wear
lashes pinned with dew.

with water


with water
all bodies
flow
even
stone

twisting rivers
in sycamores

bituminous lakes
in the cradled eyes
of horses

the red canyons
we cross
to make love

the magic
of words
this
mist from
our mouths.

Thursday, October 21, 2010

into the storm


into the storm
            a wish
to be woven
between layers
            of rain

so that my breath
            is choked
            stolen
from the cold
            cascade

the struggle
is not without
will or desire

I am too warm
            over-
            filled

            flesh
surrounds me
            over-
            whelms

the fluid self
cremated &
mixed
with the ashes
of my
hollow
musical bones.

in the green secret

  
in the green secret of the
maple tree                   in the
palms of the thousand leaf hands
is the earnest thread-making
divined through cellulose spools
of the capillary loom
sap and fiber spun
and wrapped around seed
pairs
            and from each seed arches out
an eyebrow spine from which hangs
the papery filigree
of the dragonfly’s wings.

like the streamside ring of daylilies


like the streamside ring of daylilies the loneliness
of the widowed young mother is edible           she stands
in the doorway with her accidental smile and awkward
farm boots                               a ghost fading into a ghost
a smoky willow leaning over a mirrored pond
                                                            tilting off-center
in the green doorway of a house of a mutual friend
talking of Ireland as a way of talking about her dead
husband                       serum weeping from cut roots
as she falls through the bottleneck of emotional
amputation                              her isolation   
concealed in three small children
with flooding shipwrecked eyes.