August

August

Father and mother unlock your doors 

On nights of summer. Bare

Feet gliding through hushed sighs. They love

Waiting for tomatoes crimson to climb and Magnolias grow

Larger than whales, white on the terrace

Spraying delicious scents around the homes 

Of hands, stirring quiet to lift quilts and escape 

Out the window and into the night.

In the damp heat, smallness is grand

Crashing  waves that wear the years away,

And I am bathing with the midnight birds

Black feathers wet and they sing

"The moon is a lamp

The stars are chandeliers

And you my dear are a moth

Trapped in an earthly body

Jailed by the summer night."

An Exerpt

In the unnamed begging hours,

In the remote blue, when the darkness of night has burned down

I loll in the barren belly of half sleep, revisiting our history. I can see you

Beneath the snow and streetlamp in that coat

That made me think you announced the weather. Winter had thrust forward

His granite knuckles, but we had swung wide, dodging the blow.

In his own way , he apologized for his bitterness, linking 

Each of your eyelashes in a string of pale white kaleidoscopes.

In my imaginings we are always more beautiful,

And the walkways where we stood are part

Of a city worthwhile. A metropolis considered 

From airplane windows, placed in good light, each street

Flawless, neighborhoods distinct,

Tiny squares 

Our very avenue admired upon landing.

My body remains together, though you have been subtracted.

You lifted off.

The city is removing 

A building from the ground near my new home. In these moments

Before the beginning, when the dog is breathing deep

Beside me, I listen

To the workers fire their steel voices through winter smoke.

Schoolboys, with wives for mothers

They Hold rounded thermoses close. One has a funny look, an unfocused sort of grin.

You would have pointed him out, yet only as one would notice

A strip of gold hiding in the crease of a grey morning.

Paper Kites

Paper Kites

The early evening always realizes 

My lack of resistance. It whispers to shadows,

Stirring them toward quiet rebellion. They grow

Taller than their masters, taller than me.

I move slowly through the house,

Drifting on the light of an over ripe peach,

It drips down the windows,

staining my table and papers , passing behind the eyes

Of the dog, changing him for a moment

Into a ghost. I share each room

With silence and the smell of hydrangeas. They love 

this light too. Outside my window they stand guard

Against the dust on the roadway. 

In the early evening there is also the Juniper

on the distant hillside

Where children lay

Their bodies flat against the earth, arms and legs

Stretched out, reaching 

and then rolling down, laughing and calling out

To one another. If I were with them I would speak

More like my mother and refer to jackets as parkas,

Feeling the importance that they zip them up, 

As not to catch cold. But it is summer

And I am not my mother, and nor was she hers. 

Its the modesty of growing old

That makes us realize we are all part

Of the same thing, soft and ripened,

Descending behind the trees with little struggle. 

Finding Leaves

         "Naked but safe, 2010"

Finding Leaves

I have found your mad ravings beautiful. The frantic

Running towards nothing and naming it

Love. The first leaf fell and I wish I could apologize

For its failure to hold on as the days grew cooler.

There was a time when I could think of little else, just the simple

Rebukes of lost letters and moments that time loosened. 

These have brought autumn quickly. 

A blackbird fell on the street today. I did not wake to see it, but I knew it 

was there. A time piece, an ancient bleeding, a solid ring of missing pieces.

I threw it a flower and slipped on my coat. 

We walk to recognize the movement, we kiss to recognize living. The cling

Of bodies or hands. 

I would like to join a cloudy day in winter, moving

Ever so slowly in the weathers uncertainty, unnoticed

In my drifting suit of smoke. I would hold the bird

Dressed in black, never letting her plummet. It is in the darkness of day that I remember

You, and I long to be a simple object

In your home, that I may always be near. 

In the lightness of evening I am just myself. Not alone,

But on the metro with a sandwich and you, headed 

Out to watch the clouds in a park on the industrial side of town.

A funny thing, there in in the center of factories, a patch of grass

Guarded by iron

Machines, a slope and a bench. It is just like the one we found

So many years ago. A space

Enough for two bodies. 

You would be a silly old man, and I a silly old woman. 

We never did anything spectacular, I never changed

The world like I said I would, but in the squeeze of your hand id remember

That it is rare for one to notice the movement 

Of clouds.