Bleste be ye man yt spares thes stones, And curst be he yt moves my bones. ~ Inscription on Shakespeare’s tomb

On this bright Sunday morning, I find Myself back in the ditch Feeling for your bones, with these blind Unsteady hands.

There you are, (one can only conjecture and hope When traversing the past), the last bone Of my hunched spine, and there he is, a rib Loosened from the rest

Floating in my chest, handing me the train Tickets to discover and map you, An unruly savage with whom I traded cigarettes And books for throaty ballads.

Time is the fine dust settling over my naked Limbs shoveling ineffectually at death Which came as landslides that shut down all routes To the glittering and polished

Cities of the past. Knowing all this, to what Purpose then do these cursed hands Sift through the stones, again, disturbing your Possessed bones?

For Kutti & Kuppa

It is morning and the sun still lies low, below
The tree tops.
The sidewalks and the carefully trimmed lawns are wet
With water from sprinklers.
And where the road is hemmed in by woods, bands of
Light and darkness.
The world, contrary to what the nostalgists or the futurists hold,
Exhibits the same
Ambiguity in the morning newspapers – a new cure for stroke balanced
By a fresh massacre of innocents.
Aromas of various breakfasts from open windows – bacon, jam, baked apples
Vanish when a garbage truck trundles by.
Traffic picks up with passing hour, the day drags the sun higher by
It’s orbiting leash.
Cars with office workers flanked by joggers, mothers with perambulators
And dog walkers, start the parade.
After good morning, howdy and all that to the neighbor lady in a straw hat
Hunched over dahlias and black eyed susans with shears,
The poet returns home, to coax a poem out of such everyday things
As sun breaches the screen of trees.

Words are a poor medium To transform a remembered sight Into something more permanent A cut diamond or a statue by Rodin, for example.

Yet as someone bestowed with limited Gifts, they must suffice in my case. Let others sculpt, paint or compose concertos To celebrate the beauty of perishable flesh and bone.

I can only begin with metaphors, Some of which great poets and writers Have already invented and used before me. This perhaps should discourage any sane man

But I persist for what I have seen is not what Someone else saw, even though our eyes were Trained on the same view. Take her skin – White and delicate, glittering like a wet fish.

Or her lips, smelling of cinnamon, flush with Blood, twin petals of an orchid. Hear her throaty Laughter, poured like wine from a long necked jar. Watch her shadowy navel appear and disappear

Like the moon. Consider the arch formed by her Naked arms raised behind her head, fingers knotting And unknotting thick dark hair – a bridge Over a gurgling creek, inviting the thirsty

To bend and drink the cold water directly With the mouth, like an animal. An animal, which perhaps doesn’t know Anything about these ideas I am writing about:

Beauty and the desire that beauty evokes. But tell me, hasn’t history of the world Extending to the present shown that A man too is another animal?