[A]
To toll again the saffron
Bell that hangs between
Your breasts.

To be impaled by an arrow 
Of the sun that rises from
Your navel at nights.


[B]
Touching the world;
This naked water oak, 
This hard hickory nut,
This elliptical beech leaf,

As a newborn touches everything

I touch you.


[C]
Winter fog inside this kettle
Of sooty clouds – it will snow, 
Perhaps later, in the dreaming state.

This too is a dreaming state, 
My love for you with its changing tints, 
And yet is always this steady shining lining 
The lines of my palms.


[D]
As the lone blue heron glides over Lullwater,
I scan for music. My plumed breathing keeps 
Count of a jackdaw’s hammering beat
In the holly tree. I listen to its insistent summons 
For someone.

I too wait here for you, holding a bouquet 
Of pine needles in my mouth.

 
[E]
‘Dolce color d’oriental zaffiro’ – this line from Dante
Is the emblem of the day you released me from Purgatory,
Green Eyed Devil, you who can teach even monkeys 
How to fly!

I hold that day again - it threads through
All my subsequent days – as I taste this day
On my cold tongue, this East Wind blown day
This geese honk embroidered day.


[F]
Lullwater is a crinkled crepe paper wrapped
Around the color green. 
                               I stare into Lullwater
As the upside down world is created and erased.
The wind sighs. You sigh as I thresh your body
Clear through the night. 

                                    You open your eyes
And my eyes open in them. 
                               Thus created and erased
I learn, drowned in your eyes, the secret origins 
Of all things.


[G]
A solitary duck glides into the waters, wings beating 
That sharp report of a machine gun 

                            Who is being executed today 
By love’s firing squad? 
                            Why is the front of my shirt
Red?