As long as the lights
stay on, we’re stuck.
You can’t sprout wings
or rake me with sudden claws.
I can’t turn into
a storm-tossed tree
or an otter slippery as sin.
In the light, we are
smaller than life.
Our cries are nothing
but failed words
& our sighs & gasps
might just as well
have been emitted by some
tired engine.
Light always wants
Our hosts had buried TVs all over the yard
& plugged them in. Screens hissed
their snow from the grass
as we drank draft beer from plastic cups.
They were like oracles, chthonic & obscure.
A young woman who appeared to be tripping
stopped short, stared & began to weep.
It’s not fighting, I said, trying to console.
It’s dancing.
It’s cosmic background radiation
& thermal noise, she said without looking up.
Reality is beautiful, you know?
I crouched down for a closer look.
It was 1990. The news was full
of the end of the Cold War
& the Gulf War was still weeks away.
life goes by in a blur in this hole.
straight past the sunshine, the garden,
the love,
the light.
the abyss is all you know.
In a garden
of wilting flowers,
you continue to amaze me
by being the only one
that's still flourishing.
I was once a rose,
in the garden that i was planted in.
I Provided myself with everything
that i needed to grow.
Well,
that's until you came along,
cursing me with your presence.
Not only did you stun my growth,
You also transmitted a virus
One that continues to foster me
in the worst ways possible.
i love you
what words
can say it
forget it soon
the body disposes
banalities
comfortless as angels
& violent
the reposed granite
swinging for ages
the tone
the river edge stunned
by curtains of blackbirds
my eye my tongue
stop confused
nursing these trees
i remember all warm first nite when
the painting roared off the wall
waking / and willie in
red whirled around the little black room
like mad angel / i remember forsythias
in hair and crotch and hand
by the river and i found a stone
with a face which i still have / i
remember the hills of massachusetts
& your room / and our garden of
marijuana which didn't grow well /
i remember you warm gentle impatient
beautiful wanting to make my happy only
/ & the hurt
the gentle warmth of the rising sun
fills my tired, cold heart with radiant joy,
the morning dew glistens with the colours
of the rainbow, carefully twinkling under
the golden hues, dotting freshly matured
leaves as diamonds on this ring over my
left hand, a promise which rings eternal,
just as your reign over this body of mine.
the birds cry their morning plea; melodious
etudes of the new dawn ring like wedding
bells, the soft echos of their love song
rejuvenate my shell of exhaustion as the air
brims with joyful exhilaration, sizzling with
the energy of a thousand suns. yet, it retains
the lightness of a million feathers, grazing my
flushed cheeks as i lean into your being.
i bask in the gentle warmth
of the morning sun, lying in
the embrace of a million roses,
steeping myself in the fragrance
of an eternity coming into full bloom.
the peak of one's life unravels
in a magnificent display of vitality
and passion, as every fibre of my
young soul is elevated to another
heaven; heart soaring into the
golden glow of the new dawn
before weightlessness overcomes me,
and i sink back into my gardens.
I see you foraging through
weeds in a field; it’s spring,
air streaked green. I’m with
you in the field: I’m mud, or
grass, I’m beneath your nails,
held fast. Bark flakes off me.
You pass on, satisfied. Branches
sway, flecked by tongues—
look at my garden’s sprawl;
do you see me here, or in the air?
A neighbor of mine in the village
Likes to tell how one spring
When she was a girl on the farm, she did
A childlike thing.
One day she asked her father
To give her a garden plot
To plant and tend and reap herself,
And he said, ‘Why not?’
In casting about for a corner
He thought of an idle bit
Of walled-off ground where a shop had stood,
And he said, ‘Just it.’
And he said, ‘That ought to make you
An ideal one-girl farm,
And give you a chance to put some strength
On your slim-jim arm.’
I walked down alone Sunday after church
To the place where John has been cutting trees
To see for myself about the birch
He said I could have to bush my peas.
The sun in the new-cut narrow gap
Was hot enough for the first of May,
And stifling hot with the odor of sap
From stumps still bleeding their life away.
The frogs that were peeping a thousand shrill
Wherever the ground was low and wet,
The minute they heard my step went still
To watch me and see what I came to get.
Birch boughs enough piled everywhere!--
All fresh and sound from the recent axe.
Time someone came with cart and pair
And got them off the wild flowers’ backs.