Of Her Heart

From the basement, she examines
her wounds; an old shoe, damp
unread books, the odor of memory
clings to her ribs. She's forgotten

if the moon always hung from
a cord, swings back and forth
when feet upstairs bang
on the boards, or if thunder

leaves cracks in the ceiling,
walls of her heart. She prepares
a letter to her lover, on a bed
she traces with two fingers

words about darkness, heavy
and stilled. Notes of a girl
whose eyes fell out dreaming,
of bones shaken, yet gleaming

swimming through night
like an empty shell; a space
she's saved for believing
surprisingly filled.

The Door

Sound of the door
closing, dividing
two spaces-

what is outside,
living, what is inside
deciding

which prayer
to recite
for the dead.

From heaven,
a fireline splits
what is clean

and forgiving
from the worried,
forgotten

describing
the difference
between skyand air.

We must survive
to the end
of surviving

and there,

in this intimate
room, this sanctioned
religion of building

a gate or a fjord,
despite our long
held resistance-

with violence
breaks open
our doors.

HourGlass

My time is called
borrowed. When

the children play
with sticks and rocks

and the sound of
their voices move

through evening like
glass through honey-

my time is sweetened.

The accurate shine
of light as it falls

in columns not unlike
a castle, the hours

when air becomes
ghostly, glowing buildings

becomes a sure time
to kneel, to pray.

How much time
does heart pump

through its veins? What
sand-filled hourglass

thins when turned
again, then again

and again- the endless
sifting down.

Mother Land

Her body is a cave,
the shape of a nation.

In all the dark spaces,
she has many wombs,

many children. When
they wander out of

her mouth and return
she recognizes them

by the the light
on their skin, like

the stars she fed
them, like snow

she taught them how
to glisten in a storm.

If not for heaven,
mother, why would we

ever leave you?

Fir Tree

If you could speak
I'm sure you would

with your old
tongueless voice

what trees think
of endless nights

as the houselights dim
and dark, huddled shadows

of a dog and a man
walk beneath you

without knowing you
when you know them.

About spiders living
on your skin, sparrows

tucked in your arms
in cold, biting wind,

then fly from the tips
of your fingers to sky.

How the moon, just above
your limited reach sings

to your cavernous ears
reminding you clearly

you're small, waiting
under a mammoth of stars,

your nameless waiting,
your anonymous waiting

with your all-seeing eye.

Collapse

Try not
to dream

loudly.

Moths do.
Snails do.

I will try too.

The Cup

Holding the cup's handle
tightly, it's rim never touching
bottom but ours will.

That afternoon, a cup-full
of milk spilled on the porch,
like a linen sheet wrinkled

over a sleeping, invisible
body, the heat sucking
thick liquid into laced threads.

I thought of you, how
you cover me, an accident
drying on wood, the smell

of cream souring in sun
or on skin and imagine
the moment we landed

from cup to floor,
the handle broken,
the finger bleeding,

the loss of stability,
the beauty of freedom
when the cup fell.

Blue Coffin

I see blossom where
you see error. Tell me,
what damage is worth
a flower? The blue-mouthed

iris speaks a broken
language, lives a random
life, a squatter's religion.
Here is where the root

meets rock, its secret
self; again, muscular
precision moves
the walls of earth.

Go further, down
an unknown distance-
in the evening, burial
on the sun-less hill.

Touchstone

You can be a hero; the sun
is not your crown. Neither ant
or stripe-backed swallow
will change their path;

the wind will remain
pathless.

Pebbles pressed into ground,
their quiet existence supports
the weight of kings. Your feet
will not increase their pleasure;

their pleasure is
existence.

From the infant's mouth,
a trumpet sound; not a single
cry from a thousand stars.
The skies are full of glorious

comets that fall
invisibly.

Mouthpieces

Is anyone speaking
to me? Is everyone?

Still, with no sign
of residue, I know

the light has been
here, untouched,

ethereal, lasting.
You will not

convince me
otherwise.

Easter

This nation is a field of fire,
whose breadth, measured,

its mountains folding in
like wound around a sword;

a voice of thunder falls upon
this city, whose ears, deafened,

distracted by the crashing shores
becomes a woman in the desert

calmly praying for the dead.

Gather up the whitest wool,
prepare the clouds and earth,

for all that has been shattered,
broken- will witness birth.

The Last Time I Saw You Sleeping

You slept that night, promised
to die- an offering, offering.

You're two eyes swimming
further, further back like

a perishing flower failing
the vine, a fish desperately

pulling bright-white string
out to terrible, distant seas-

reeled in finally.

Sweet weight, seizure,
slipping away, a ship from

its moor, moves carefully
like sun on a low-lying hill;

this born-again quiet,
this laced, silver film.

How strange, your mouth
lying against a blue, satin pillow-

unlatched and dreaming
and dreaming.

Shine

The book is a critic. "Like you",
he said, " better left un-opened".

You can use a knife to peel
an orange, though easier done

with your teeth; a scraping tool
is death, the irony of discovery.

Living, then, is a hazelnut,
smooth-skinned, unpenetrated,

natural as a grove choked by
brush, where mouse-birds nest

like lightbulbs of a chandelier
powdered in fine, brown dust.

The only freedom is light
outside its room, lost-

no layers or skein, just
wide, thoughtless shining.

When the Moon Becomes a Mouth

When I was sixteen
all day I'd stay awake,
a venus-trap waiting
for flies, honey-ed
mouth, a young moon
gathering clouds.

In my twenties,
a vibrant angel trolling
for stars; I could never
name the constellations
but I wanted to be one,
a cluster of one.

Thirty four... I gave up
prowling the nightskies,
settled my sights on the uneven
ground, learned to see
in the dark like an owl-
a large, slow bird.

Forty-some years, my ears
grown accustomed to voices,
faint as footsteps walking
in slippers, soft as touching
winter fur. Over and over,
they whispered: "listen closer".

Sixy-five hours draw nearer,
wrinkled wrists, furrowed lines,
worried brow. Weighted down
like fruit on its stem, a depressed
clown, the body is tested,
the mysterious, damaged.

Eighty seven, the moon
becomes a mouth, honey
sets on the tip of my tongue
and flies, so desired when
I was young, gather
excitedly.

Neither Wood nor Lyre

A bold-blue reflection
when the face turns

white is a sign
of suffering.

In another country
rain beats down

on poplar trees
bleeding purple;

my weary eyes
explain the sallow

skin of fading light.

All morning, sun
a crimson flower

cries blood into
a million hungry

iris; obliterates
the violet canopy-

neither wood
nor lyre will revive

the tattered dying.

Completely Rimbaud

He wrote about angels,
the rise and rumbling noise
of heavenly highways;

unharnessed the darker
savage shades of injurious
misfortunes to prey upon

the christian children.

Can a man be saved
if he cultivates duplicity?

Did God create the good
and evil, the summer

and its ravaged storms?

He drew a chain, a pirate's
rope and hung the masked
and poisoned souls like flags

he raised them to the sky;

the winds, his deep benevolent
pride snapped and whirling madly
cried: what precious weathervanes!

House Arrest

You were, yourself, a girl
when I was water's bud
drowning in your blood cells-

the way light evaporates
in a cave's cool, dark mouth.

We're separate now, though
often you forget that stones
were made for throwing

not holding things down
in place of gravity.

The temple is a body
disemboweled by its own
violent alchemy; priestess,

you taught me about expulsion,
the cutting away of heart

from its head. You're older now,
I am not far behind, not hidden
inside the silent house, the sleeping

pelvis that hangs like a single,
empty sock on the clothesline.

Punishable

So the world wraps itself
in everything you knew,

there are seeds more
fallow than your flowering-

punishable.

If all be told, if all
the meaning grew,

then sea and all
its tributary streams

would move, will achingly
spring forth undetoured,

overjoyed, extremed.

Now the river widowed
banks overflow the bridge,

the mastered long-boned
shoulders of earth turned

to gold, to rust, to love...

in an instant, dizzy rush
beautiful becomes a poet.

Windows of Heaven" (Gen. 7:11; Mal. 3:10).

Angle of blue,
bright, white

birds
drifting;

none
of them

knew
what

a window
was.

Before I Go

This is my corner, my long-bearded
quiet place. Does it seem wise to hide
the face when its mouth is moving?

When I say "amen" I am a stranger
to my prayer. It is un-natural to vocalize
good-byes, to seem prepared. I mean...

the last thing you think before you die,
should have been the first. In a round
world, the light folds inward on itself

and disappears. I am not afraid,
there have been deeper, darker woods
than this, less brave who'll follow

and when I press my final kiss,
coveting the dimming, dancing flame,
the sun-soaked ceiling, the ebbing,

twisted veins, what I have given
to the world and all that I have
gained- flows up and outward.

Affetto

Dawn of the hour,
sweet-bound bower,

the flavorful seed-

what secrets
gather

the bee?

Dead Soldier on the Front Page of the LA Times

Whose face
did you steal?

What young woman
died in your head;

what brave soldier
sealed his own grave,

a ruined star
absorbing its debt

without flash
or ambition?

Praise be
the tin-god

whose cup
has been violently

broken.

Freedom

Like a bullet
or a bald man,

freedom;

the quick, fastening
wing to sky,

sleepless, seized
hostage speed

the body
to its stunning

departure.

Prodigal Journey

From the west,
the heart speaks,

its voice changing
on the journey

east through desert
into sand and bone.

When it finds
a river, swims

drinks, purifies
it's vision-

confesses
its afflictions

to the faithful salmon,
hunting bear and

black-tipped
cedar cones, then

thunderstorm,
the nervous deer,

the waving fields of corn
recognize the accent

of its origon, its slow
and burning song.

Whose ear abandons
innocence; what leaf

yields and falls
half-mourning,

what home prepares
it's entryways, its rooms

for the returning
of the prodigal?

From the Levee, We Watched

the sculler's boat, carving
razored waters; the wake delayed
behind the oar thrust, streaming
like hair of a submerged girl.

The tenuous nature of wood,
fragile as pod; repelling the weight
of black water catching the hull,
heavy as paste, yet slips

through like an oiled sword.

The muscled-back rower
flexes, a butterfly testing
its shoulders, his arms poised
forward, baiting the rhythm

of pull with his chest,
shoves out, thighs tensing
like bullets, heaves rearward
and pauses, the world

and the rower stand still
for a moment as the boat
glides away.