Breakfast

love like rain   falls

the wet collar

of her

white shirt collapses

against her neck

supports

the soaked nest

of her hair that

cradles

the streaked egg

of her face.

if ever

if ever

something

like air

in truth

fills me

ever

and ever

again

what sorrows

thereafter.

Like Grapes

the pears         thankfully

are small this year.

the tree           thoughtless

sways in abundance.

Cusp

from the edge

of the bowl

the sound

of a bell

song of brass

in ornament

of crystal

softly struck.

Thanksgiving

you waved

your arm

nothing

to say

ashes

on snow.

Infidelities

one fed the

hole inside

another

invigorated

and she was

you in so

many ways.

a year as rainfalls

a year as rainfalls

in bone memory

tree rings

archives in dense materials

eggshells know

           

                                    (concrete

                        too disembodied)

hardness in layers

                        drops

                                    encoded

                                    atoms

I dream across cross-

                        sections.

there is love

there is love

                        here

and the will

to love like

the will

to build furniture

that stirs

when I am alone

too long.

the wind will soon be bound by the thickets

the wind will soon be bound by the thickets

that will whistle piercing incantations

none of us can decipher

                                    children hang wires

from low pin oak and locust limbs

                                                the children

are the first to consider this strategy:

monitor to manipulate

their measures continue

the songs of children form mathematical spools

of ribbon to remind us what we have forgotten

how concise a clear mind

a room without clutter

or rotted floorboards in piss-stained corners

a seamless mind with raw sunlight

on everything that passes through

everything weighed

tagged

catalogued

against its resonance

ghosts shuttled through the appropriate

throbbing conduits

ghosts, inconclusive data billowing

the gauzy web of a child’s taxonomy

as if sailcloth.

Interrogations

the wind howls looking

for its heartbeat          I admit

that I tend to ignore the wind

so he catches me often

calling out to   inviting

the others the lesser gods

he catches me feeding them

and is witness when they

inhabit me

            I have no excuse

for my direction or in-

discretion        I try to love

is all

                                    and you,

wind, do you love as you savor

the dance in everything

do you

as you pass through the world

as through a net

                        as you pull

at my clothes to get at my chest.

where is the grief in the harvest

where is the grief in the harvest after the land

has been sheared and after the vigils for rain

have ended                              now we must

tend to each other in ways we cannot tend

to ourselves                             I ask you to help

me push these walls outward and to hold

that line as I cut with sheer will the rusted

armatures lingering in my forsaken fields

such wreckages erected and half-erected

                        abandoned for other promises

and now the clean-up you’ve been brought to

for twenty years now like a secret cabin in a

secret wood with faded curtains and dishes

that remind us of childhood summers at an

aunt’s or grandparent’s house             full

of anachronisms and inherited meanings

inhabited with small suitcases where I hid

my humiliations and my shame at not being

like anyone else                       sometimes

I dream of this cabin with my ghosts politely

knocking on the door   asking through the windows

if it is time yet growing impatient insistent

and I wonder now that the harvest is over

and the light is dropping down in its golden bow

when will you invite me to your cabin to meet your

ghosts and to help unpack the suitcases         when

I ask as if through a window.

Tryptich

at night the dead make crowns with their bones

to mimic the living who with feathers

mirror the gods.

as they roam the dead carry collections of our teeth

like a pocketful of tombstones

or a riverbed.

the vision of the dead like autumn wind is blind

hands of the wind comb the dry fields

for the love the dead leave behind.

At the End, At the Beginning

            The crows are still asleep, though morning has made her introductions and apologies.  Leaves, bound only by frost, float off at the warm touch of her arrival.  At the edge of the field the corn shakes off the night breath, while the river lingers over her song of the ones who roam and thread the sinewy moonlight of this ancestral valley.  For a moment, nothing moves;  then the oily air spatters with cartwheeling crows while on wires and treetops other crows start shouting punchlines to jokes they can’t ever remember.

need to walk

need to walk

out beyond

the usual

            markers

where sadness

like tinsel

cartwheels

over snow

where the wolves

devour

the tarred shell

of your heart

out there

face-up

bleeding

in the snow

another heart

            stirring

in the wound

in the healing

            womb.

my cup of flowers

my cup of flowers is the full weight of you

wet with your ancient tears

I will eat you when I wake and drink

this tea to return to the floated mind

of your dream

                        without hands or eyes

we will walk together through burnt fields

in the polarized autumn light

                                                through

memories of love that was almost love and

nascent beauty that became this grace

                                                my cup

of flowers hums with your voice          briefly

you held my face against your throat

                                                another breast

for me to cling to

                        to enter love through

                                    to add my ancient tears

to.

the clock is weightless

the clock is weightless in my attention

I write to you               you seem to care

your clock moves you from one spot

to the next

            it is no longer celestial time

in you it becomes dimensional

                                    fractured time

                                                duration

he once asked you

            -how long did we fuck-

and you knew

            -almost eight minutes-

dressing as you spoke rushing

around the shifted bed

take some time to write me back

                        my letter ended

yesterday        on my phone

your apology

                        in so many words.

being following

being following

becoming

                        the

cascade of many

years into radiance

how dream settles

into song

into

stillness          

how when

the wheel settles

            it throws your

unexpected shadow

on the half-lit world

and now the world

on your wheel

turns.

I agree

I agree

with you Cid

I am old

enough now

to want for-

bidden things

old enough

to take in-

ventory

small storage

of years of

wants and needs

like boxes

damp in the

underground

chewed by mice

forgotten

until you

Cid       opened

the doorway

down    and I

descended

for nothing

but to see

the rotting

foundation

I’m built on

to see where

my poet

eats sleeps and

operates

to watch him

drag the hose

between fuel

tanks   from the

rusted out

libido

over to

another

I never

knew of.

she like the

she like the

hydrangea in

its color speaks

the soil of her

history

            arthritic

roots to opal-

escent blooms

of her eyes

the       wells

of her resig-

nation.

The Ferryman

even now

a ferryman will take you across this

low wide river

for when you choose

but gently

payment should pass gently as alms

to the muddy quartz-fisted anchorite

listen as the throats of            the river ring

his shrouded water-bell

                                                see how

the sun shines through and hides his milky

cataract eye

where the river drains into and out

of him

this flooded pearl of cascading water

erupts in the moonlight like datura

                                                the blooming eye

a bulging spool

that winds and unwinds a silver thread

for what you might hesitate to offer.

with no loss

with no loss

of words

the cynic’s prayer

concludes:

the story is simple

birth(intermission)death.

to be so concise

            a meteorite

to isolate with words

the cynic prays

to a dissolved self

molecular

beyond belief.

Standard Tuning

I have ghosts of myself still in my mouth

their whispers inked on her breasts    and she

dreams of a wedding-funeral

            ceremony for the exchange of selves

of ghost for ghost.

cut the tree

cut the tree     they say

and we cut until

the massive bone shatters

and shouts a river’s thaw

another sixty years uncarved

at our feet       unguarded

by the incredible height

                        now length

our decisions consistently

making these conversions.

in this house

in this house    sleep

is restless

            another chore

to add to the list

                        we wake

sore on the rocks

of our mountainous

dreams

            cramped by

damp weather

and shearing winds

                        we wake

as if dropped

into a thicket of scalding

wild rose

            the uncommon

world in its orange dawn

and open mouth pulls us

to our feet

            back to our bodies

back again to the lists

inscribed in the metal

and brick

of our belongings.

just as red

just as red

tailfeather falls to

the ground

                        from flight

                        or perch

                                    ship / wreck

                                                in air

freelance weight eased through

                                                currents

                        cradled

adjust

ments

            to bird

                        lessness.

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.

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.

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.