Blue
at sunrise I set
down that portion of me
and whisper to the room
“Not yet,”
and this is how it is
for at least the long length of another day
or two
I remain, knotted up
against desire—
the thread-pull of leaving
Int[e]r[l]ude
The machine sputters
to silence; black
coffee steams cupped
anticipation, and it has taken
long sips of this early morning
to be, completely,
here, turning
before the brightening day, burning,
and then to remember
(it shrieks itself into being
–a hard start)
that it is not the dead
but the buried who slip
backwards into the cold
smallness of hard shapes
(I come back
into being)
and the morning’s warm
quiet sharpens to jagged
half-light,
emptying-grey,
and waits…
and stays…
(and who is it
that has fallen away?)
The morning unanswered;
The coffee undrunk.
Endings
By evening, we’ve already forgotten.
What needs saying waits
with its wings tucked under.
Beneath the field of heartlong glances
a speckled silence grows.
And the lightning bugs
remind of summers lost,
remind of the when past why of this all.
Night words, dusted with gold and crackling,
remind of a future—time beyond reach.
And the lightning bugs—
(I think I can catch the sweep of their frenzy behind my eyelids.
I think I can keep something for once.)
Mothers/Daughters
You are in the den
starching linen.
I am six years old, your girl,
come in to prove myself.
Backyard birds warble
in time to your belt.
Later, you stand astride
the front lawn,
brick in hand,
and cigarette,
his new car careening backwards
down the drive.
I must prove myself.
I am fourteen, or twelve,
or six,
shaking the birds from their branches.
You are here and there
a lifetime. We never get
too far
from one another.
I love
colliding with
you.
The tumor spreads its fingers
around your throat
and I am six years old
again. I must prove myself.
The birds won’t leave their perches.
There are no birds
or branches.
There is only you,
now, disappearing
beneath the white waves
of your deathbed.
You are gone.
The sea is roaring quiet.
Those birds
are far off now.
Those birds
and their sturdy branches.
Passages
I am going north,
I say to her—
It is like a little code
between us.
Me, with my ungainly
heart, and she, full settled
and circumspect.
I imagine she grants to us
every cliché of young
and stupid love,
unknowing, as she does,
the way our minds catch fire
with each crackling cut.
The way the evening meetings
of our bodies bloom
like brief flowers.
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