devour

do you mind
if i devour you?
you are like
a bright yellow
egg yolk.
when i am
nearest you
i feel
the sun.

Fall Leaves

Here is the difference.
When I was young it didn't matter

the color or condition.
I gathered all the fall leaves
to save them
with wax and paper.
Now even the most perfect leaf
red –the color you preferred
I’ve learned
does not belong to me
an old believer
here by chance.

 

looking at your picture

I didn’t mean for you to haunt me.

there are no dead
these days.
we sing only elegies of the defeated
full mouth
full bellies
grieving, sad.
I can’t name you
- not to others-
though all night long I speak to you.
it cuts the cloth of the dark.
the world is always alive
all memories, all feelings
lit with electricity.

lessons picking berries

 

things you learn picking strawberries:

you are old.
joints hurt bent among the rows
so close to the ground.
 I am old, true
but then when I was  young
I would not have been picking strawberries.
others would have done it better.
and the berries, hiding in the straw
would not have reminded me
of my own shy child
meeting his new teacher
pressed damp and nervous to my legs.
when I was young, I would not have smiled
to think of the food the berries would make
for my family – spoonbread,
pies, jam.
when I was young, the packages
disappeared into my grandmother’s kitchen
and came back out as plates of food.
I didn’t understand then the alchemy
of sugar, crust, butter and milk.
my grandmother had a hard life
and didn’t suffer children well.
certainly,
not in the kitchen.
I was never forgiven the Thanksgiving
I was underfoot
when the turkey came out of the oven.
for her mistakes were indelible
like berry juice
spilt on white shorts.
when my grandmother died
my mother asked me if I would like her recipes.
she’d lost use for them years ago,
-in fact , long before she left.
I use them to make jam
while my own children sit on the kitchen floor
coloring, stuffing berries into their mouths.
even as a child I knew
I knew it was better to be old.
to be old picking berries.

worm love

tonight our love

feels like a worm
summoned to the surface
by the vibration of the rain.
my dim cluster of nerves
- a brain of sorts - you might call it
struggles to remember
this sound of danger.
-have I heard it before?
like an earthworm I'm
washed away
by less water than it might
take to fill a child's little cup.

nights

there are nights
when i can think
when i can write the words
he never loved me.
if it is written
it must be true
if it is true, there can be
no argument
and i am weary of argument.
there are nights when i remember
in the silence
how you opened my chest
and my heart
fell apart
like the seeds of a
pomegranate.
you never loved me.
its written in books
in my poems.
i write the words.
i write the words
for the nights i can think.

lost poem

I wrote you a poem

but I left it on the car seat

I folded it in half

then folded it again

negligently

I placed it here

then there

until it was lost

and I wonder what type of life

it must have

apart from me

without my hands

without my books to read

or pages to be

pressed between

I can remember the words

some phrases really

when I think on you these days

I think mainly of your voice

though I cannot recall

a single word

you said to me

not even goodbye

in moments of stillness

of quiet and calm

I collect myself

and I think to write it down

again

but it stays just that

an unfinished task

time and again

I only think on it

too often

too often we long

for the things that consume us

only to hold them at bay

-as if there were virtue in restraint

as if the river invented the dam

or the tree the saw

i know you

i know who you are

as if you were Jacob arriving at the well

and i

i had just drawn down my jar

what good

you asked me what I had done with your letters

-if I had even opened them-

if I had read them

I might have known then that you left her;

that you were coming in the spring.

and what can I say but that I might have?

I might have but, there were so many other things

-the sky in April seemed endless, cloudless

and I couldn’t stop searching it.

in May I hung the laundry out to dry in the still cool air.

when I made my bed it smelled of wind, of dew.

in June the strawberries bloomed and ripened

just like always in the shelter near the door.

what can I say – your letters

I might have read them, but what good would it have done?

what good would it have done

without you here to speak the words?

lines

I heard that you left her today

and I remembered that she always called you Blue.

I never did.

I remembered your mother standing in our yard

-          June,

June,

                June,

my mother would say, shaking her head

as if the world were falling apart

over apples and picket fences.

I heard you left her today

and I remembered our first day of school.

you called my name

-          over and

over

                and over.

you were in one line

and I was in another.

I never answered.

it seemed the thing to do.

winter love

your kisses were so gentle

that I mistook them

for the snow falling softly,

decorating the branches.

I mistook your touch for the wind

moving through the bare trees.

you were the winter itself

stealing upon me.

how restful it is,

to be in your arms.

how calm it is

like stone.

your heart

is a pale moon.

you aren’t afraid

of the night pressing

on our skin

of silent fields.

you brought me the love

that makes spring possible.

the price

others may write about eyes

about glances

what would I know of this?

-my sight extinguished at his touch

his hair running though my hand like water,

his lips like currents

pulling me deeper

drowning me in his breath.

in the morning – departing

buttoning clothes

like children gathering slippery stones

from the riverbank,

shoving sandy, never clean feet into shoes,

trembling, suddenly cold.

 I thought I knew what this would cost me

- I should have known what this would cost me.

I should have known

love isn’t a price you pay only once.

radiant star

they say we are made of earth.

this must be true, because I crumble at your touch.

like dust I scatter on your breath.

they say we are made in the same vein as the stars.

they are our ancestors perched above us,

each in its own silver chair.

this too must be true.

when you hold me close

our hearts together feel composed entirely of light

radiating from your body to mine.

we are nothing more than atoms transmitted

-the sound of a chord being struck.

they say we are immortal beings

each of us possessed of a soul.

how could we not?

the universe is infinite

-that truest note escaping us-

how could we ever stop traveling across it?

the return

kiss me, love, and then return
-while you are gone my heart will be
like a furrowed field in winter
dusted in snow
lines of black
lines of white.
kiss me, love, and then return
-until you do, everything will be
as if only in passing,
flocks of birds alighting on a shorn field
for a moment a seed,
a drink, rest
then a cloud ever changing, ever migrating
bird by bird a whole, falling apart.
a kiss my love
-then while you are gone
I’ll imagine only your sweet return.

the compass

they tell me there are directions
– north, west up,
down and left.
but how can this be?
when no matter where I turn
I am always moving toward you.
there are maps that only the heart can read.
it will tell you that sometimes even the shortest distances
are immeasurable, are too much.
no one praises a heart of stone,
but I must confess that mine is granite,
lead and quartz,
weighted, heavy.
my being is always falling in your gravity
toward the earth, your touch
your heart.

with you

the first time you held me

it was like a house burning

in the night.

and for the first time

the world around me

-illuminated only by fire

seemed black, immense

frightening.

the moon a pale seed

buried in the earth

with no more light, no more substance

than ghosts, than memory.

being with you meant

 understanding being without you.

being without you was unbearable,

cold, immense

black

- a pain illuminated only by fire.

my heart was lost in it

as cool, as distant

as a nameless star.

nothing you could say

could call me back.

nothing could

convince me otherwise.

the flight

I left you today, love

though perhaps you didn’t notice.

I never left my bench,

never transgressed the garden wall.

still – for a moment – I was

as far from you as the first star.

I planned my escape as carefully

- as painstakingly – as any prisoner.

I crafted my wings from your stolen letters,

from clips and tape left unnoticed on the desk.

I hid my rings (they were too heavy)

in my shoe at the toe

like the mouse we once found

nesting there.

I took off my clothes and opened my chest

(how the rusted hinge cried out!

- I thought for certain

you would hear it).

I wanted to leave behind my heart (it was too heavy),

like the rings, like the shoes, freed for flight

but there was no place safe to hide it.

nor would the door – opened - close again

 like a broken shutter

vulnerable, caught by the wind.

did you notice?

did you hear?

I will tell you, love

(though you did not ask me

-though you found my creased wings

torn and folded in the bin)

why did I return?

always I the felt the weight of my heart in flight

the cold and

the stars and the hazy purple twilight

swirling in my open chest

and I was afraid.

I saw your face – as distant from me as the last star

and then . . .

something drew me back.

something drew me back.

the cardinals

I put it all in words,

but these were like the seeds

lost in the snow at our feet.

I watched the birds hunt for them,

each one a red plumaged pulse

breaking raggedly

frail, desperate, determined

against the cold.

what is it they say? even the birds

are clothed and warmed by some miracle.

you sat beside me

and in our nearest thoughts,

our close silence -each of us counting

-each of us wondering

-each of us imagining,

their wild and windswept homes,

their frail shelters in the night - each only big enough for one

and the soundless, stealing cold.

you took my hand and I blushed,

imagining the feel of their down, their hidden softness.

I never found my words, never spoke them

though I had written them on placards, on buildings, on my heart

-frail

- hopeful

-sustenance

mere words.

like the birds without shelter, without worry,

I didn’t need them.

all love is stolen

do you remember my grandmother’s wood?

-the hanging snake vines that formed swings for two,

the pale, upturned roots near the shore,

that made strange, magical palaces?

we called it her wood – though in truth it never was.

we raced through the neighbor’s field to get there

-how furious he would have been to know

that we had crushed a single tender plant.

you held aside the barbed wire,

and I crawled through,

my hair caught, and you pulled it so roughly free

that I cried.

all love is stolen

-you taught me that.

it moves through our heart like a fever

and then it is gone,

no more our own than the amber moon

passing through a cloud.

like children we are freed only for the planting and the harvest.

in the winter we will be called back

to stand in line.

only try love

If I came and I found you empty,

I would remind you, love, of the simplest things

-childish things:

mushroom caps, starflowers and smooth white stones,

the moss castles you used to build me.

If I came and I found you empty,

I would remind you, love, of my grandmother’s wood and

the great, magnificent tree – ruined, split by lighting,

covered in vines and violets

-do you remember?

Do you remember these childish things?

Try, love, simply try.

There was just enough room

for me to crawl inside, to peek out

to touch fingers, to whisper stories.

If I came and I found you empty, love

I would beg you to take me in your arms

and like that wrecked and ruined palace

to close me inside yourself.