[1] On what sea does my makeshift Skiff of a heart sail, land locked?

The churn of water, the spume of breath, No chart to navigate this invisible time, A jerry can of words at one end, half full, To fish for meaning, and a playful gull Wheeling around in spirals, a sky bolted Weather wave pointing to a breathing shore.

And what possibilities at landfall? A room, Some vine shade, a plate of flowers, throats Humming through the evening, and under a chintz Quilt your body of moonstone to sleep against.

[2] But this terror too, which swims alongside with its Shark blade-fin, the molar scars that the body hefts With trembling and salty curses, through the grunt Work of heaving water from the gunwales overboard; All this to keep this stick tub afloat till the port of call.

I think I need more grace that I thought, to keep This skyward gaze at what must be love's gull.

Love is like the lion’s tooth ~ W.B. Yeats

Once I walked at nights like this, Only to get as fast as my legs Would ferry me, away from My small tremors of loneliness:

This was before you poured One whole milky way into those craters.

So when I walk again into this autumn night, A joyous contentment spills from me like The whirligig of leaves, like the cottony angels Sent out by dandelions into the bowing wind.

So I color the night, this rustling silver spotted ribbon, With splashes of azalea red, for you have poked me Everywhere, with your lion’s tooth.

I forget this present world. I remember only you
An iridescent O bracketing my world now as the sun’s bangle
Brackets the moon in one of those not too common conjunctions
Of stellar bodies, all aligning themselves, all eclipsing themselves.

I forget the appropriate word. I remember only you
Pulsing like old silver or fall sunlight, which speckles the quite tangle
Of my nerves buzzing, as I bend over my long meditation
On what I can only describe as love for you.
I forget the open book. I remember only you
Rising to meet my eye with the curvature and the angle
Of your belly, translucent and mysterious like an altar, on which
I drop these empty pages as speechlessness falls around me.
I forget the unfurling cello. I remember only you.
Chugging through my smoky nights as your green eyes un-spangle
The stations of memory situated on Time’s liquid rails, like notes of music
On staves arching over ache of this momentary separation.
I forget the massed beeches. I remember only you
As I run my palms over their smooth barks, from which dangle
Weathered lovers’ advertisements, gashes made with knife or nail –
This is how I want you to cut me, again and again with your fine
Scalpeled presence, and spring me into the clearing of being.




My Poems