Oh heart, heart, heart.
I will bury you deep below
and see what grows–
I don’t want to watch you
working, anymore.
Go cool off in a cellar.
Go improve with age.
I cannot stand your
incessant green chatter—
Go and let the sweet dark
earth take your edge off
and when I dig you out again,
I will freely offer up
your balanced sapor
to anyone who would partake—
that is, to any one
who had the patience
to wait.
This is no paint fleck peeling in the heat.
It is the scalene wing of a moth
adhering to the wall,
and if I love anything at all
it is this sort of thing:
soft subversives, surrealities,
the dozen moths
like unblinking lids
that I see now
where I couldn’t, before.
As if I would begrudge
a lack of luster!
I know too well,
this friable nature,
how a sharp wind
can lift away
its dusty armor,
or a too-clumsy hand.
If I was cruel once
it was also without guile–
surprise me, love
surprise me now
and I will never leave
again.
Night comes late now
and when it does
a corner of horizon
still glows like an ember
and so the day lingers,
reluctant to cede,
and the moon waits
to show its only face
again, starting to wax
or starting to wane,
how weary to be
a constant, let alone be
in constant motion,
if I were the moon
I might want to cease,
to disengage, to hide
away until here below
the oceans went quiet
for just one moment,
and if I were the tide,
I would welcome
the silence,
the serene
if brief reprieve
from gravity’s
endless aching–
Now overcast and sultry,
I miss the lake
and its heart-stopping
coldness. The pace
of life adapts–
the neighborhood cat
sulks lazily away
from the spray of the hose
upon its limp leaf lair.
A task for today: uproot
the snarl of bleached
pea-vines, shy spring
no match for this
heavy-handed weather.
In the distance, now,
what might have been thunder–
and now it’s truly summer.
I have no plans
that can’t be changed
so I open all the windows,
summoning, waiting,
to listen to the sky
as it crumples,
to feel the rush
of a tenderfoot breeze,
to put away work, impenitently
to while away
a day’s remainder–
Doldrum day. Such heat
and listless air
and a riot on the ascent–
snow lilies, wild columbine,
chickweed, yarrow,
blessed lupine
all strewn along
the unsettled talus slope.
Nearly a hundred
in the shade,
the salt on my skin
a mockery of snow.
Of all I carried
up, you were by far
the weightiest
thought—
the longest shadow,
the most insistent thirst.
For hours now
I have held petals
on my tongue,
rivers in my arms,
to offer you–
where have you gone?
Ikebana on the bar
besides orderly jars
of loose-leaf tea–
each photo that lines
the exposed brick
wall tilts out
at six degrees.
Even the mis
-matched antique
chairs are carefully
curated
(also holding life
transiently)
and oh what discipline
to keep it neat–
the art is restraint,
what grace, what
trust, leaving a thing
open
to suggestion–
I missed the exit
and the other exit
gathering the night
around me
the moon
the city lights
spilling out beyond
the interstate
I didn’t care
even as the road
narrowed into
farmland
loam unseen
but leaching
out its mineral
scent no stars
country dark
I had nowhere
and now have
nowhere to be
except with you
what other
destination
is there?
Earlier today
I was watching
sugar ants
make an easy
ingress through
the open screen door,
like spilt beads from
a split necklace,
recovering
themselves, bit
by amber bit,
making something new
but not unexpected–
The form reveals itself.
Or so we would hope,
tomorrow marking
a closer return
to our beginning–
what animal sense
has brought us back here?
A return being
at heart
the same
as an ending–
a prologue
in other words
High cirrus a wisp
of a whisper
I play at
carelessness–
Yes a cloud
seems to float
but I bet
it feels laden
when compared
to effortless air–
This is not to say
that you are a burden
(but I’d suffer it
if you were)
The second day
of summer the air
a bit acrid
the day moon
suspended like
a half-formed
thought–
a little wind
now and it
might go out
completely
a little wind now
it might incite
a spark
OPTIONAL POETRY 