This morning, walking, a welder’s sparks falling inside a building frame, a cage of flames and empty space, of noncommittal sky. Sactum sanctorum, with its quietest corners, a heart, too, is made from many rooms: antechambers, foreparlours, endlessly recessing, a heart has no heart to it, it is a door that opens and shuts. Passage defines it, existence demands it, a place of access, and egress, that hue of regret. Somewhere along this way, honeysuckle […]
Cold coming over the pass, cold rain, the steep drop, the silent lake, couldn’t see a thing. And the lights of those first few towns, so warm at a distance– another arrival, and what then? A stone, no other word. Unmoved and unmovable, aloof. Knit a nest for it, feather the den, dust off the snow– or don’t.
The gingko again, new leaves faint at the edges, a hesitating green, tempered ebullience, middle spring. What is inside is petrified, a relic, scared, and sacred. All weekend long, a promised rain that never really arrived, and so it goes, the hour, the day, half-measured, half-guessed at– an imprecise heart can still feel exacting.
Take this doubt, I’m tired of carrying it– which is not to say that any part of this feels wrong, more that my heart at times gets unhinged as the moth bruising its wings against this glass-paned door– Give me time and coolness and empty evenings, a half-moon, faint stars– I’ll find my way back, again, you know this
Heart, heart, what did I say? Oh the moon got into you, the moon, the sky, the lake— and then you went and showed your face, boldly, no hesitancy, and so now, we wait— How vast, this night. And just like that I can finally admit, it isn’t that I fear your loss— what terrifies me most is that some day you may be right. Or some evening, sitting […]
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 […]
It’s a real bitch to start a fire in the damp don’t I know and yet when you smile I remember it’s happened before– at least I think it was a smile it’s sometimes hard to tell with sidelong glances (If I could I’d blush I’m sure) this a more enjoyable sort of floating softening from sad and sodden to a nearly glad and the sillier soppy
OPTIONAL POETRY 