Brittle in the Fall

audio

When you loved me
I would turn
my face
in any direction,

swivel the stalk
of my neck

to catch
you, peering at me,
sense the burning
of your gaze.

The earth
sat on its axis
tilted, unfair,
and wobbled

enough
so that you and I

could never last.
And the lust,
what you
gave and what I took,

dissipated
much too soon,
left me
brittle in the fall.

I’ll quit, become
an artist,

give up
the green and profits
to paint canvas
images

of you:
orange and yellow
burning against
the blue sky,

auburn
lace on the spare clouds,

and you, falling
to the ground
behind
the still horizon.

The Long Light Ain’t Right

audio

The long light ain’t right, odd lines,
not a beam invisible
from a flashlight, but shuttle
or plane pieces cross the sky

debris ablaze in a arch
of speed and matter, alight
and smoldering, plummeting,
tail or meteorite

a wish singed, breaking apart
through the atmosphere, pieces
falling ceaselessly to earth,
turning what mattered into light.

First, Beginning With Fire

audio

First beginning with fire
lifted from the still ruins
of some lightning strike, the ash
lot of a forest struck down

by the unborn Gods, stolen,
passing singed hand to singed hand
along the now visible
night path to science, to here,

where we make our way along
yellow glowing roads, along
thin strips of highway
with blinking and comatosed

and halogen eyes, where we,
with our vacuum of reason,
have captured the light, forced it
to face forward, and to march,

though it sways around corners
and peaks over hills and blinds
us in the flat glass mirror
we use to reflect behind.

A Lighthouse, And Old

audio

Attention, like a slow strobe
that peers into the ocean,
that can spot a passing ship

and warn her before she splits
her precious cargo onto
the sharp shores.

A lighthouse and old, pensive
as our first radar, spinning
with his back turned to no one,

standing and spotting a light
onto the land, then the rocks,
then her hull.

He can adore her only
in passing, with a harsh glow,
then turning onto the next

alluring thing; fertile ground,
beachhead, the dicey edges
and waves, vacant.

So Rooted

audio

If, all day, one could sit
in this dirt, so rooted,
in this moist temperate earth,

unchanging in the trunk,
with just leaves, like fingers,
that could pitch and angle

to the light, with just arms
that crack and sometimes die,
there would be no measure

for time. What one could know
would be narrow, no taste
for ethnic food, travel,

dating outside your race,
not leaving for college.

One would barely taste love.

What was known would be well,
an old farmer, Edsel
rusting in a field,

the water of the pond;
knowing what hue the light
shadows at your feet, then

marching overhead, then
with sureness like science,
admiring, as it dies.

The Night’s a Tiger

audio

The night’s a tiger,
its light stripes making
their way from the street

through the forest trees,
those weighty paws thumped
on the sallow chest

of the earth, making
no noise, but breathing
whiffs of the rank flesh
and blood of the kill,

its fur like the wool
we cower beneath
to protect ourselves
from being eaten

by the beast behind
the slats of blinds, cribs,
from the dark monsters
of our own dreaming.

The night hunkers down
in a tired heap
and summons us. Come

to the open jaws
of the beast, feel
safe enough to sleep.

August and Partly Cloudy

audio

The sun, who has always loved,
has always burned, the young sun
who today rose with lofty
intent, to be brilliant. Sun,
in pajamas with patterns
stitched on the front, sun who woke
to an overcast morning,
…………a front
……………….rolled in over night
on a gust, yawning behind
a thick grey blanket, but who
sees no less keenly. Our sun,
whom we spot in passing, peaked
through a hole in the ozone,
through the door of the bedroom,
…………gutsy sun,
……………….whose reactions
create the morning. Our sun
whose willed anguish we call gusts;
typhoons, cyclones, hurricanes,
fog rose on a placid lake.
We stretch our arms out trying
to sift apart the clouds, tug
…………so the sun
……………….may come to dry
out our sopped earth. We invent
machinery, pray, retreat
to the tropics. But the sun
feels none of it. He burns,
a sleeping form at midnight,
a cool breathing that heals.

The Light at First

Audio

The light, at first,
is not brilliance
nor even light,
but lessening
of the darkness.

And maybe this
was God before
opening day,
his hazy face
awoke from sleep,

the dilated
eye of the womb.

And maybe this
was the first steps

of my someday
soon to be wife
round the marble
wall of a cold
and crowded room,

a lessening
of the darkness,
at first a blush,
cause of the curve
of atmosphere,

a purple-blue.