What the Night Brings

Prepare yourself; shadows
leaking over ridges
in the mountains

lengthen.

Not one but three
hawks circling
the fallen prize-

circling.

Blackness grows in
toothless woods, hurries
towards the sunken valley

eating light.

Just outside the safety
of your house, evening
knows the secrets

of your heart;

prepare yourself, the shadows
bringing home your grief,
a phantom of your sorrow.

Deeply, like Rain

Everywhere, rain following
rain. Everything

in the world
is drinking.

We could be happy if
I could hold you

captive in this
storm. Even I,

am beautiful
when its raining.

Capturing

Cup the hands into a bed to
hold the sick bird, gently place
on colored leaves; the sky
does not appear to notice,
a piece of it is dying.

Roll the hands like periscope,
frame the moon. A hole of light,
a tunnel to the soul emerges,
haunting, lovely. Later, in the evening
stand beneath the cedar trees; listen

to the silence of its shining.

Open up the hands for sleeping;
fingers poised to catch a dream or
shadows moving over linen hills
like waves of sea. Forget the hands,

the heart will tell you, mark
its drum, the beating darkness.
Use the muscle, its hollow rooms
to capture love.

An Ordinary Morning

The less you look
for happiness, the more
you find it. I am not surprised

or puzzled by the darkness.
What leaves no visible sign of
being- the oiled palm print,

the disarray of foliage altered
by a heavy foot, the streak of
daylight bleeding in a summer sky,

the shadow of a passing bird
moments before disappearing
into a wall of fog and cloud-

need not be understood.

Everywhere is sadness, shame
nothing saves us from it. Here,
I close my eyes and quickly see

rays of light, blazing edges burning
outward like an ordinary sun just
rising in an ordinary morning.

To Live in This World

Those circles beneath your eyes
like bruises; lips that rise subtle
as the Mona Lisa smiles-

a disappointed mystery.

Who doesn't love the ringlets
dancing off your neck? What
star's beauty suffers from a lack

of pleasure?

For miracles, alone, I stop to
wonder how the light reflects,
cast back, regressed and shining

on your blessed face.

If sadness sketched is loneliness,
if where you look, my heart must
follow; there is rapture in my body-

there is rapture.

The Guest

Pulled down like root, twisting
secret, I neglect the city's splendour-
sleepy cafes, gleaming streets,
young girls leaning out of
cotton-curtain balconies, watch
the children play below with stolen fruit
or marbles.  Did it rain today? I would not know,
these eyes sunk down inside their coat.

If I were guest, this riverbed would greet me,
now its body barely moving, shuts me out.
The light it needs, the whirling skylarks often feeding
from its tangled banks are missing;
what is missing stays with me.

About Forever

Of heaven: gaping eye,
all silence, light. A sea
of light; white, white

silence. Of darkness:

implausible, distant
distance. Not like
anchored night but wider

as in blindness. Of spaces:

wall of fire, shadowed wood,
floorless room. Floating,
falling, hacking,

bending. About forever:

enormous waiting,
sleeping, waking,
dreaming; no escaping,

no departure.

Blame It on the Wind

Rain or so the sky stained cloud; it was
the wind (your trail) made flowered,
dew grass, butter root and shallow
bowls of soil spring.

I hear the thunder, resonant and rich,
your speaking weighs the blue light
down, travelling to some high point
then burning.

I don't appear to love you only when
I cease to dream; a storm is coming,
heading home relentlessly. Rain or so
the sky stained cloud-

it was the wind.

Back to Hearth

Fashioned like a particular life,
they say, beyond living
the process takes a turn;

and so occasionally, a sense
of stillness within motion brings
a folded surface forward.

What emerges differently than skin,
the bones, the body; then, naturally
the subtle act of forming void? Here,

the spirit splits apart, patterned as
the evening sky; so oil, water, smoke
and dust, morphs itself to light.

We leave some trace, a tremor, fixed
and spiked the body stays, stripped of
dream or violence in its mossy grave.