On a ferry to an island
I close my eyes to the blinding
aluminum bench and red steel deck.
I listen to the wind argue with the sun,
their fiery tongues whip around my exposed
arm and shoulder, like two foes from an old fable
vying for dominance over a traveler and his cloak.
I leave my winter skin — a white field blushing
with tiny pink buds — uncovered.
My Skin
Mourning Dove
I didn’t know I was lying in the heart
of a mourning dove until I heard it, the hollow
music that wind makes when it traverses the lip
of an open mouth sending wise echoes down
a narrow throat into an opening — this room
sung into glass — these clear, green walls turn me
into a ship inside an impossible bottle.
In this transparency, I wonder if the creases I know
so well, the folds that brought me into this space,
will help me find my way out.
judith
A flat pillow supports her head;
her long hair is twisted, tucked
beneath her shoulder,
out of the way.
When the bedroom door
clicks too loudly into place,
the tendons in her neck stiffen
cutting dark shadows over
her bare flesh. A cold stream
enters her breath and eddies
around her dreams:
without root or trunk,
a shimmering crown of white blossoms
sweeps and thrashes across a black void;
with a violent roar it hits the ground –
trembling like a heavy chandelier.
in abeyance
a feathery leaf
emerges
from its oval bud
reaching
with the full breadth
of an open hand
though it has just begun
to widen beyond its embryo
yearning has green wings
sap from the root
pushes the bird out,
flings it into the sky
to soar with a steadfast horizon,
a dormant promise, ever present –
never grasped
Every Day
I step down and away
from morning’s upraised plateau,
a white bed cut from Love’s provenance.
It is the earliest of all mornings
when we are more than skin naked, and painfully aware;
when my love and I, touching or not, are the rose’s innermost petals,
so tightly interrelated, cupped around our seedy core, protecting it.
We are flushed, yet ever so fragile and green,
the last to bloom,
the last to fall.
The Room
The sun doesn’t reach the stale, pink blinds;
bereft of light, accordions don’t sing for the rose.
They archive dust that might have danced outside;
tiny specks graced with an eye’s watery glint
might, yet, bring insight back into the room.
Through horizontal slits something sees
where she brushes her hair for the mirror,
where she removes her clothes for the white bed sheets
by the dark closet’s open mouth, shallow but hard to fathom,
like the worn paths between the bedside and the dresser,
the foot of the bed and the wall with the hanging mirror.
She moves within fear, and wants to see; she tries on love –
on marionette bones with no handle on the puppeteer.
Roadside Trees
Elongated torsos arch
away from hydro wires, like
startled, imaginary beings;
phantom arms extend beyond
their flat, circular shoulder stumps.
They might be signaling distress,
except their remaining branches
reach out and the whole arboretum
leans into hope – ready to thrive
in another direction – far from
the power lines, far from the road.
But their roots continue to tunnel
and clutch the earth just beneath
the asphalt to keep everything from
falling to the ground.
The Last Snow
Fearlessly,
their poorly dressed bodies
run to the edge of their playground
to greet a late, unexpected guest.
Their bare hands peel back a deep ocean;
they lean and push against tidal waves rolled into cold
boulders of delight, paths of defeated grass in their wakes.
All the while, their guest playfully dares their skin –
burrs of ice prickle hands, faces, ankles, necks.
Then, their soaked feet create islands of rubble.
Children know that our bells are alarms
for the fires racing from their chests
to their limbs.
House
The letters I’ve written
and possibly all the words I will ever write
are inside this envelope, a foundation for a home:
crumpled doubts, silken threads, a jumble of veins.
I’d like to build an earthen dwelling with deep window sills,
not a stone tower that stands erect against the sky,
something close to the ground with the smell of a garden.
But, in my sleep, I dreamed the builder’s hands were yours,
not my own, and I gave my self to you, foolishly.
Your fingers, delicate and white, work with tender purpose
around the rectangular pouch, like an insect about her sac of eggs.
You return them to me, but with no words of your own…?
An idle dream, an inkling, is my only proof that you ever received me.
We build anyway with our abandoned hopes, a house whose windows
reflect a forest — the silence between us, our shared walls.
for J.L.B.
My personhood expands in your nakedness,
but I don’t understand this — how there is also decay,
for something very particular dies within the seam of recognition
when the back of your words fit into my vertebrae
and your honesty loosens my interwoven eye lashes.
I see myself as in a mirror, but for a moment (an eternity)
I am you, poet, who became everyone on the white page.
But, listen, I don’t like this. I don’t want the entire world
to fit inside my window frame. I reach…I reach…I reach beyond
this “little room an everywhere.” Please, be as you were
before you wrote. Be clothed and be more than my reflection,
be more than my recognition. I want somewhere to go.
This poem is my response to some of Jorge Luis Borges’ poems from Fervor de Buenos Aires and Moon Across the Way.
