Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Exit

I am sitting in the back
of a fogged car, gray seats
and not enough leg room

behind a gas station, where rain falls
on the windows, on the roof, to our backs 

where a forest sits of
towering, overpowering, pitch black
trees with eyes that watch the night
as I am staring at your face

in reflection, water sliding down over your eyes
smoothly pressed and soft as an empty freeway, closed

to the mountains, impassible; we are late, it is cold,
ice is falling, and I am holding you.

Thursday, November 3, 2011

Long enough, I have cultivated fields of fog and corn, happiness
as fragile as a young bird; you don't know how long it took me
to plant this garden, and now, a sudden lack of seed.

the rows are shallow, dug with a spade. I expect too much
from a patch of earth that has never been planted
and I am watching to see what grows -- nothing
but the wild seeds blown over the wall.

_________________________

I told you it is madness, a constant back and forth, upheavals, swoons, dives.
It seeps up and debilitates; watching a sunset sink into silver hills. This is nothing.
There is a woman sitting
at a window, looking out upon the weather,
and she glances back -- whether
or not you stand with her in the room, she will not
look directly at you.

In summer seasons, she fishes at the river
reeling bodies tied on strings, to dangle
helplessly, then toss them to the currents.

And her child, not born, but distilled
inside her womb, who died
ages ago, yet is ever smothered in her breast --
the little girl does not rest, but cries a lonesome wail
of innocence, and the heart's cracked details
of a blanket torn away.

And the woman is still waiting, ever waiting
for the day, but does not realize -- she will never be
revived, restored, remade.


Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Wings

You passed, a gray swan
at dawn's light. You passed
through wire branches and low, bending limbs.

You flew across
distance, wingspan
of our armlengths, hand to hand.

And for a moment, the wings broke
to either side, and I realized I mouthed
my own name, while looking for you in a sky
that was empty, save for the distant call of birds, and the subtle mist
that emerged from memories of you, moments tossing stones
into blindness, the constant
balancing attempts and rational violence, with no release
but a burst of wings.


There it flew, all of you
as everyday as a gray goose, no silver swan-necked, hovering bird
but there, your unloved, molted wings -- gray, yet true.



- - - - - -




What is the unnamed? The unreachable
peaks upon wings upon a broken wind; what speaks
through us, when a hole opens
and nothing replaces, fits.