Saturday, December 10, 2011

Spring Drought Canoe

My yellow utterly incarnate tree bends to the wind,

trailing its leaves, like the wake of a trawler, across the glass

in the wall at the head of my bed.


A sunlit dress with a pale green fringe,

and narrow, deep-red veins,

drifts from a hanger on a rack of clothes

behind your name,

haunting the still air near my memories,

flirting the billowed breeze

beside my hopes.


My rising summer heart

and daybreak eyes

twist

into the fabric lines,

fingering knots

against the sight of naked limbs

reaching out to the wind,

answering the wind:

a dry and ceaseless rustling--

the planks of a canoe scraping against

the riverbed stones

in a spring drought.


My yellow utterly incarnate tree,

unravelling its solemn bough,

splashes its dress across the wall

and spreads a tide of dew before my dreams,

unclothes my dreams with names,

whets the abandoned channel of my thirsting dreams,

disturbs the sleep of the canoe

on the riverbed stones of that distant spring.