I
Youth
and love unite beneath the power
of velvet skin and dark, half-sleeping eyes.
Spring seems to last
forever to
the
flower
that feels the rush of
chlorophyll's
green rise.
Time is not—cannot be of
the
essence
when second hands are
slow,
standing
still,
while all around
the sun is
streaming gold.
The thought of end, of
beauty's
obsolescence,
seems unreasonable and
cannot hold
as long as love is
dressed in
daffodil.
II
Youth never sees
itself or has a reason
to know that it has
no infinity.
It turns, like spring, a sweet, unknowing season,
never doubting its divinity.
But as in fall trees look down on their leaves
that once had been too much a part to see,
powerless to reconstitute the whole;
so age sees fallen beauties and it grieves
the unclothing of the lonely soul
that, now in rags, goes begging tree to tree.
( First
Prize Raintown Review Poetry Contest 2001)
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SEER
I dreamed you were
a murderer
and all the summer
air
could not
unblacken what you were
or make the body
fair;
for what you killed was love itself,
its light and
aching breath,
and though its
limbs with studied grace
still moved, the
dance was death.
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Sometimes
I think that, once upon a time,
there was a
you meant only for a me,
that what I
saw in you, essential, sublime,
was all there
was or would ever be.
It wasn't hard
to love your boyish charm
or the sadness
of what your life had been,
but a soul,
unfairly, can disarm
and blind true
love to what else lies
within.
If, perhaps, I
had been a saint
my vision would have burned away
the
rust
that clung to
spirit. But I was too faint
to love that
long. The fairy tale is dust,
but like all
tales began with something
true:
I loved,
a moment, something good in you.
(Published
in Romantics
Quarterly)
|
TABULA
RASA
What is this sad
and alien world
into which
they've come,
with field and
sky unclean, and darkened
sea?
With a flag of
plague unfurled
and slowly
beating drum,
the shrinking
earth disputes eternity.
Yet, like flowers,
children grow
beneath the
finite shade,
and every leaf
they touch they
consecrate.
They rise and
stretch their arms to show
how beautifully
they're made,
and turn the
world into a virgin slate.
(Published in Romantics Quarterly)
|
There is black magic in a photograph.
We
stare through
smoke and think a
contact
made.
So
strong the
sense of flesh
and life displayed
we watch a smile
condensing
from a laugh.
An
instant so
completely
fresh and sealed
is like
a pause
between beats
of a heart—
for flowing blood, a
solid,
resting form.
And
like a
message rolled
across a field
of
sudden void
just before a
storm,
it proves life's quiet holds its greatest art.
(Published
in Songs of Innocence)
|
BLOCKS
You build with
blocks, and thoroughfares
have elegant parquet, the portals
rise up to rest smooth walls and stairs.
Of gods’ revenge on lovely mortals
in lands of white built on an isle
of dreams, starward from sea below,
you can’t have heard in your short time;
and yet, your little people climb
up to the top in single file
and cry out: No! No! No!
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It
is, some say, a
wasteful shame to live
among the giants,
dead as
they are tall,
to pour bright
dreams into
a silver sieve
and watch them turn
to
powder as they fall.
How tiring to
always think
of up,
and strain to suck
a thin
and deadly air.
How sad, inviting
Mr. Keats
to sup,
and have him act as
if you
were not there.
Still, colossal
minds will
not erase,
their wakeful eyes
tracing
graceful lines
of jeweled planets
spun in
endless space
according to
inevitable
design.
And I, for
one, think it
far less sweet
to triumph small
than fail
at giants' feet.
(Published
in Sparrow)
|
ONE MIDNIGHT
I left my
house because you were not there
and
every light was burning to bring back
your
face, so calm, your dark and gleaming hair,
but
when I turned to see you, all was black.
I left to
seek you in the midnight sky
that
knew your beauties, counting star by star.
I
could not breathe for feeling you close by,
but
turned to see the sky grown cold and far.
The fields
brushed evening’s wet against my feet
and
distant mountains held still pools of light.
I
heard you call. The air grew thick and sweet.
I
wandered after you into the night.
But only
birds called back from bending trees
that
blended into dawn’s first golden red.
The
grass was soft. I rested on my knees
beside
a stream, and knew that I was dead.
And in my
loneliness I cupped my hand
to
drink of earth’s cool water one last time.
But
as I bent to drink the air was fanned
with
spice which made the water’s taste sublime.
I
looked into the water’s stirring face
and
saw a light that changed what I had
been,
leaving
you forever in my place,
and
giving me, with love, my life again.
(published in Carnelian)
|
REVERIE
I
walked
beside the ocean in a dream
and
watched it swell and shrink and part and merge,
and
slide from oxide green to yellow-grey,
opaque,
then shot with light where golden fish
were
caught a moment, in uncertainty
that
reddened gold and bronzed their stippled orange
before
they blackened back to sea again,
leaving
me to wonder what I'd seen,
or if
I'd seen at all. A hundred clouds
in
shifting shapes, white with silver edges,
turning,
rolling into clay-like fields
of
umber, almost black, and burnt sienna,
crossed
high above the water with such speed
I could imagine purpose to their flight.
But
purpose, plans, and hope were human things,
and
I, beside the water, by myself,
could
think of nothing future, nothing past,
but
only light that scattered on the sand,
so
filled with salt, with remnants of what was—
a
brick-red crab, an empty pink-lined shell,
an
oyster left without the glistening pearl
that
made us think it beautiful and worth
our
measured human touch. The tender spray
of so
much life against my face grew warm,
so
like a kiss, so like the first embrace,
the
very first when love was only joy
of
rising froth and upward-spilling light;
a
light connecting life to other life
to
let the spirit wake and know itself,
and
let it play among all living things,
to
move and grow and shift and touch the world,
changing
it with subtle water motion
that
pulled on every thought ; to let it feel
the
rush of pain and pleasure's slow sweet rise,
the
shock of brilliant reds, the strange perfumes,
that
lured the mind into the silent woods
where
every breath was felt, and every pulse
of
blood was known within the heart itself;
to
let it find, in the changing shape
of
living , its own perfect changelessness;
to
let it live, and let it then sink back
into
the shining black of hidden depths
where
spirits moved like unseeing fish,
not knowing of their selves, not of the
sea,
sealed in darkness,
never
knowing light,
or life itself. I
felt the
water rise,
as if to wash
humanity away
with blinding foam,
too much to
feel and see—
and so I woke.
The dream was not of you.
I never thought of
you or
longed at all
to see your figure
standing,
looking out,
gold against the
green of
churning waves.
The dream was not of
you, but
when I woke
your face appeared
and filled
the aching hollow
the sea had carved so
deep into
my heart,
still red with life,
before it
ebbed away.
(published in Romantics
Quarterly)
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