2/15/2011

The Heroine

Now the last hero plants her foot
in the ruined field like a small bird
falls into the ocean's story- a victim.

Who wrote this book in a language
of sadness? I think it was my father.

Now she stands, her heart cut out,
a coupon in the daily paper. How
desperately she shops for love like

vampires do. But only from the dead.

The middle of the faery tale: the child
lost in tangled shadows of herself,
a blue dress soaked in blood or dying

light, the kind that resurrects itself
the following morning. Few parables

end well. But this is her gift, the last
few lines of a lifetime narration-
the ones that save the heroine.

2/07/2011

Yet Lovely

There's a kind of intimacy born
to horses, oceans, wolves and fire;
their large bodies stand between
this life and death,

strangely protective.  All that wildness
saying wildness doesn't purely exist
for survival, detachment, aloneness;

only stars can truly occupy this perfect
form of isolation.

For the lonely: you are merely broken.
For the mysterious: authenticate your beauty.
For the wretched: move slowly into light.
For the weightless: rise.

And then, a kind of truth subjugates
the instinct, the way a cougar follows
feral horses, the bear studies packs of wolf
or oceans imitate waves of fire
burning brightly, doomed yet lovely.

2/02/2011

Where Have You Been All These Years?

Hardly touchable. What they say
about cold things- marble or
the emotionally wounded.

How does winter burn the soul?

I bought a house, hardly liveable.
A sad dog showed up on the porch
missing an eye. He seemed to ask
"does anyone live here?"

We waited, the one-eyed dog
by the door, me by the fire, the night
with its pensive dreams and fantasies
of summer. The truth is

not much has changed from
one year to the other. Maybe
God is sleeping, maybe dogs
only need one eye and I

will never need to touch
anything more startling.

An Invitation

A little instability like satisfaction
comes, an obedient unflinching
fullness. As wishing, a small
half-reluctant hand reaching
from blackness into eternity.

I am learning how to live like
wind first moves its head, takes
its first steps over the world,
the power of wandering, a thrill.

You could come with me.

A Flash of Light

Here a confession: the moth detests
the flame, trying to obliterate its shining
sacrifices furry wings, a short, questionable life
to protect its foolish offspring.

We are pieces of nature. Marvelous rescuers
of strangers and flowers and love.
Silly bleeding animals whose eyes
remain inspired even though

the fire blinds us.

The Fifth Commandment

I am tired
of fathers and mothers
and sorrows.

I'll take the barren night,
the thirsty, endless ocean,
the red stars exploding;

their dead pieces flung
apart like tiny, burning
arrows.

But then, I lie
even to myself. See
how reluctantly light

leaves its body
to the dark or

wolves release
the screaming hare
to inevitable silence.

Everyone must be born
somewhere: in a small cup,
a narrow tunnel, a blood-filled sky.

What or who we belong to,
from where the cord was scratched
and chewed away, the heart despite

its origons, indecisive
daily, shifts its weight.

Critical Mass

While the snow, its roof struggles
to bear the weight of your weight,

the body of you, the head of you,
the tail of you. While one small

feather of me on you
crashes through.