Thursday, February 17, 2011

we hear heartbeats


                        we hear heartbeats

in our awareness

            feel in our connection

the weight of another shifting

                        in the distance

we listen from the lonely ridges

                        of our memory

perched on ledges

selfishly carved into the mountain

                                    in order to

separate from the world

                        in order to dissolve.

The Truth


you can’t deny what happened to me
                                    what I witnessed
every night      after the bars closed               you can’t
act like I didn’t hear you begging for the end of it all
to be killed once and for all
you can’t ignore what I haven’t been able to ignore
what still clutters our relationship

(
the motherless child of a motherless child
                                                                                    )

rippling sheet of white emotions
that hovers between us
guilt and regret
of bitterness and dry tears

the anger I haven’t been able to shed
                                                your anger
what a man will do to a woman if she lets him.

Custody


with one arm I circled you       lifted your thin corrugated body over
the rocks to give you
your true weight
to the river

                                    then


watched the years vault up through you
volcanically                                          your resistance humming
like the rusted edge of a wind-rubbed bell                  memories
of the violations against you surging until your fists shot open and


you erupted screaming
as if suddenly swallowed by fire


and I sank to the bottom of my own fire                     roamed
the glowing coals         looking for shadows to shroud
your ruptured molten sanctity


I was useless                           lost in this custody

my ashes settling between the stones settled between us

my smoke following weaving your echoes.

Thursday, February 10, 2011

so begins the


                                                            so begins the harvest
as deer nuzzle and browse under the hardening moon
as passerine rhythms shift to the muted drone of migration
when with the leaves I am brought down to words
in an open sun-shafted room


prayers gather on the crop stubble
as we suckle from the bending breast


so begins the song
of the bone-white dream         the approaching days of etched grace
the calligraphy of bare trees against blank skies


                                                            so the song begins
with the thinning gusts of autumn
laced with corn stalks left like batons by the harvest
left for the dying wind to defend itself
under a sky about to explode.

common enough


common           enough
            the gestures

that ignore time

                        we eat
                        history

midsummer mornings

            dew-drenched

c r i p p l
      e d
fruit
trees
           
                                    coiled
berry
                        vines

snake haunted

            tourniquet heat
                                    hope
                        for rain
                                    steady
                        rain fall
                                    before

(until)
            walnuts

                        & pheasant flight.

go back


go back
            to fix
what’s to come

            her turn
to collect
the ashes

as I sink
            under-
            water

the whole house
is having
            trouble
            breathing

and the rain
falls and clogs
            the air
            outside

            outside
on a hook
in the yard
is hanging
the mobile
she was asked
            to build
            so long
            ago

she made it
in minutes
this morning

            our lungs
still labor
            in this
            weather.

Thursday, February 3, 2011

Gale


to take apart
what remains
of a coherent life

is to decide
which stillness
could contain
your fluency


the many things
that you’ve made
and collected
like scattered
emotional centers

you arranged them
as if you were
feeding them
with memory


these artifacts


these footprints of
a life of
meaning how
to dismantle
            it all
            after
            you
            go.

a pool


a pool
of night
opened
in me

for ballast
sadness
sways in the
uncharted
heart.

Voyeurs


the mother is beautiful behind the glass shower door
bent over her growing restless daughter

she moves quickly       constantly        to keep
ahead of the feverish temperament                her long
dark hair spilling over her thin shoulders
she gathers it again at the back of her neck as she rinses
her twirling daughter in the light spray
                                                            and I watch
as she washes her tired bending body impatiently
                                   
her daughter sitting under the spray also watching.