Oratory

incandescent

you walk through my dreams holding
      my pain in your hands like coals
           your flesh peels back burning I
                lay down beside you my skin
                          peeled back I turn the knife on

myself you peel my fingers
    back you take it from me and
           still I kill you in my dreams
                because you are there (because
                          he is not) and because I

believe you are immortal
    and cannot be harmed even
           though I know that every-
                thing dies especially love
                          especially loving me

   

I Turn In This Season Toward Winter

Heavy as stone, I am falling. Illness
rises around me, a cold, lethargic sea.
I am sealed from autumn. All the warm
colors slide past my faded skin. Geese
follow the call of the sky, the lanterns
of stars. Their own white bodies carry
them home. Maples are clouded in halos
of gold. They hold in their burning arms
restless constellations of birds.

   

journals, notebooks, diaries, poems

laying the mind out
on a white sheet
sometimes in modest bedclothes

sometimes naked
flabby and flatulent
sometimes in a dark shroud

look at it there
pennies on the eyes
breasts nuzzling the armpits

waiting to be washed

 

june 6, the last spring,first summer day this year

the river has stopped rising
      trees are in it up to their hips
           there are no islands anywhere
                only birch and aspen swaying
                      in water     their hair     a shimmer

of green and yellow light     I sit on the porch
      my hair     gathers seeds     white fluff
           pods     fine yellow pollen     a dark butterfly
                passes by in the wind another shimmering light-
                     catching thing     starlings whistle     sky

story-book sky all blue with sweet white
      clouds     sun lays its buttery hand across
           clover     columbine     tulips     smooth river
                stones in the garden     this small poem is
                     for mariah     on this     her eighteenth birthday

 

juneau on a clear day/ or, haiku water balloons

august wind. . .
green leaf
    flutters down

sequined water        flashing
float plane                 shadow

salty taste
i imagine
    your skin

    round moon
radio towers
       rising

northern lights
falling star

gulls cry
on the water

   

just the facts

she was only three
it was a walking doll
her eyes closed when she
was laid on her back
she wore a ruffled dress
hair:  blond
eyes:  blue
it was a walking doll
when she was laid on her back
her eyes fell closed
she wore a ruffled dress
she was only three

   

The Ledge

We sat talking in a cafe in Juneau,
Alaska. The windows were dark with rain,
black sky in the middle of the afternoon.
You told me a story:  a woman

stumbles and falls into an abyss. She
hangs, desperately clinging to a tree
rooted in the cliffside. God!  she cries,
Help me!      I'll help you, God says,

Let go. You laughed and finished your beer.
We left together. Later, we fell apart,
as friends will do; months I wouldn't hear
from you. You left out the part

about the ledge, the ledge she couldn't see,
carpeted with shrubs, just beneath her feet.

For an audio post of this poem,  go here.
[revised 25 January 02005]

   

Letter to a Friend in China

You travel far to lose yourself
in strangeness. You watch a man
gutting a turtle into the street.
Hills fade in the distance.

I stay in my house by the river.
Aspens are losing their yellow
hair. Today I found a wounded
bird perched in the brittle garden.

You are learning the Chinese way.
One does not speak of such matters.
Evenings and mornings are cold,
sky washed with glorious colors.

Fog lifts from my river at dawn.
Frost embraces every surface.
Birches, drying into autumn,
rattle and bend with the wind.

You eat rice and sip green tea.
You wander crowded alleyways,
carrying with you the pale
alien you now know you are.

I drink Italian coffee with cream.
The moon is chipped in an open sky.
A slow walk on a dark night, beaver
slamming its tail on the water.

Soon snow will come to us both.
You send for warmer clothes.
I tighten the shutters, and sleep
with the dogs.

   

love, i ask you

if I go out mining
carry my pick and my hoe
if I go out in the dark
morning to dig you up

to dig you out of my-
self the pick to cut away
stone and the hoe to turn my
heavy dirt will I find

you hard and silent just
another sharp stone in the
seedy soil of me or should
I go out in the night

with a flashlight a torch
to pull your night-crawling self
up out of the dark of my
thick loamy skin will you

rise to the bait of the
light? if you do and I pull
you up thinking to pierce you
on some sharp hook and feed

you to another poor
fish will you break in two and
half of you slip back through my
crumbly crevices will

you still be turning there
in the deep dark loosening
dry soil with the slippery
sheen of your body?