Saturday, January 28, 2012
Estrangement 2 (Acknowledgement, Desire)
Estrangement
January
wind, a feral motion
twisting in and
out between the days;
the days, suddenly
strange to themselves,
estrange themselves.
They turn
inward,
long fingers curling,
pale, digging into
their collars
and scarves,
to seek a warmth
not there.
Sunday, January 8, 2012
Miserere
Oh God,
these pathless thoughts
and fruitless dreams encompass me;
be Thou the hope I cannot see.
Oh God,
my twisting lips
and hateful tongue destroy;
somehow, be Thou the word of joy.
Oh God,
my graceless steps
have murdered and entangled all my ways;
be Thou to Thine own Self the voice of praise.
My God, my God,
my soul stripped bare,
I lie unveiled to Thee.
My hope, my joy, my praise,
my prayer: be merciful to me.
Dry Oak Tree
dry oak tree
unlaminated
glistening
curls
a doorway of hesitant circles
low moan followed
clutching spasm
after slowly instantaneous
shattering of limb
her lying still
her turned words
and the darkness
like a sound of horses
growing rising bursting forth
descending out
from limbs and trunk and wind
a rush of wings
threshing of breath
harvest of caught eyes
outcry of blindness
fingers skittering across the stones
braided so deep into
the twist of height
becoming nothing
an arrow
splintering outward
from her break of bended bow
my bleeding temple
streaked across her spattered leaves
stirring against concrete
a new autumnal sound
as I go on
uplifting my destroyed wrist
and clear eyes
In Twirling Arcs of Soundless Light
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.