From Cyanosis
IV.


This is the night, and in its dark folds
Her scattered skin shines starry blue
Each reaching its pale light through
The dark swaying cloth that holds

Each adrift, glowing itself out
Against the immeasurable sightless
Bounds, as if to flee its own brightness
Into another glow, and its timid doubt

Winks and waves, as the sudden wave
Of leaves is swept along with hair
And the dress dark sways. With fright

The blue pale fingers shaking crave
To lie holding, with her body bare
And framed with darkness. This is the night.

VI.

This is the night; she sits clothed in lamp glow
Alone, distanced, blued, hand held to her ear
She speaks, and into the phone she can hear
From its blue glow, the vapors of an echo

That responds to her the words she grasps
Through the light at her ear, the shield
To preserve, safe and concealed
From the gnashing silences. Gasps

Cry out from the black boiling brine,
And she cannot help but turn
Against the glow of her shelled light

She sees nothing, but lets a voice remind
Her of the sea and the gasp is the churn
Of a darkened wave. This is the night.

From Perennials

X.


Haven’t you grown tired of passing away?
When your blossoms whither behind your ears
Become brittle and fall, mutilated, our fears
Rise anew. It is this, then, that we wish to say.

Hold yourself still, would you stop if we did
If we ended this constant chase through empty
Spaces, as if our panting would make it be,
Make something grow in your wake, as you hid

Behind graying bark and withering leaves,
What is left: these bare outlines of limbs to reach
Up to the paling sun, and hibernal roots clutch

The azure frosted ground. We forget this much:
When you leave, when we stop, you will not teach
Silence, only what the wind clack of branches grieves.

From  Études

Saint Stephen:


This is the place he stood alone. See the faint stains
Like faded roses wind scattered across
The stones? This is where he waited for the first to toss
A stone. But as he noticed when the light wanes
The face of God smiling where the sun had grown

They stood there all shadowed eyes
And he, with his back to the walls was alone
And he saw each one holding piles of stone
That looked to him against the pink skies

Like petals. He smiled, there, and they gathered piles
Of them for him. Reds and pinks and purples cupped
In their trembling hands. And their eyes, he knew were smiles
Like the colorful petals, and he knew too the sky would erupt

With petals all around him. Here he waited, and saw the first one fly

It met the setting sun and dissipated, then slowly as if a sigh

Fell through the air, and more, and each felt soft like a caress, he
Laughed softly as they fluttered around his head, to see
That this was a wreath, and they fluttered around the place he would die.

Death

My father’s back was turned

and I was young.

The blueberry’s cranberry

color backlit by sun;

white flesh squished into

my lifeline’s crinkle.

I tasted it, the tartness in my

glands a sting,

an impatience in my

July mouth.

My father’s back was turned

and I was young

and hasty,

just 10 and bookish

in the old man’s garden

plot, to see the berries

and the rhubarb

while the

whitecorn ears got boxed

for worms.

My father’s back was turned

and I was young

to gardening and garter snakes,

the green kind, along

the July fence all curvy

against the straight.

I was young, my short hoe for

beanweeds making me

right-handed in the sun

and thirsty,

a parchedness of nose

and cotton-mouth,

a copper taste like bloody

teeth in apple bites.

Eye contact in the slither second’s           

parallel, the passing motion

ended by the blocking force of steel

blade justice for the apple-giving trick

they said he played on me

or would have.

Preemptive justice

in the garden,

fresh blood on juicy

blood meal making

cakes, the tool-shaped tongue

a crooked glisten.

Thinness, in both our girths

and psyches, instinctual

betrayal of our reason

for a taste of something

clean and earth-grown,

both our chances blown.

I kept my limpy victory

in a painter’s bucket’s

brackish water until it

smelled like something new

and different, white flesh

turned grey and rotted

with the water, less color

to the snakey skin,

more ugly fumes

to make my father

come back out

next week,

take Sunday’s naptime

up with burial,

stern looks and grunts

of anger and disgust

at sonship’s slippage,

Death’s triple knocking on his

hands and eyes and nose.