Monday, January 31, 2011

On why the Sea is Salt.

You walk with your hand
the first cradle
beneath your waist
and there is no answer for it.
Among the trees your sister
is birch, white and slender.
Your brother is water
sweet upon the sanded shore
and they both bend to greet you.

Younger sister, companion of youth
how far your heart has wandered!
Come and sit,
let me cool your weary feet.
Lean your aching back against me
We can bear your weight.

O sister, dear brother,
how heavy my burden.
I can feel your new roots creaking
beneath it or peruahps it is my heart
breaking again. Wash well, my brother,
but how can you soothe this stain?
When I left you how light my heart
how hungry my belly with all the hunger
that youth and life may allow.
Now I return heart and belly full of sorrow.
Satiate I am and more than enough.
Through the night I am weary
and in the morning I am sick
overfilled again and again in the new light.
How can I stand in the new spring?
I who danced as free as cousin Wind
now swollen and clumsy
an old water skin filled to bursting.

Quick rushed the water by
throwing waves against the rocky shore
spraying the greener grass with his rage.
The pale beech paler grew and lo her bark
pealed back in long tears
and the weary sap fell to soak into dirt.

In your sorrow your pink skin faded
the colour sinking like blood into the clay
leaving you grey.
Through the night you wept
your sister and brother crowded around you.
The red dawn found you
still at last
as still as stone
and still you stand
beneath the beech
beside the sand
seeping salt towards the sea.

Earthbound

The salt made sinister

falls

a hard rain solid white

to wash bad luck away

and here I stand on the sea

with all the sand before me

and a growing mountain behind.

Who are you to rise and fall

against the tidal moon

to stand and sing your sorrow song

I swore I was done with you

Sing salt fly salt

behind shoulder like shadow

let white and black embattle

Let the stinging grains make new

the rot that clings to me

I will turn my back on you

I will not hear you sing

The waves may rise the very sea

may beg for what you seem

But I have salt and salve enough

I know what your song means.

So sing salt, fly salt

over shoulder back at moon

I am leaving greying shores

and will not return here soon.

Thursday, January 27, 2011

Not Just Dessert

It is important to note
I did not know he was sick.
He did not tell me.
There was no polite cough or
suggestion of weakness.
He ate well and
we argued over the check
and threatened
to explode
or at least to burst
a button or two.
I told him
that if he went first
I wouldn't bother cleaning up after
and he said that I'd
better up the tip then.
We laughed about
a service charge
for such an event.
Enough laughter
to leave
you breathless
purple faced and
collapsed.

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Instead of Shanking.

There's a honey glaze
on your skin
that sits and crackles
in the sun
a sort of electric glow
that vibrates like heat
in waves from your contours
it is the lesser magic
to its cousin gravity
and has not yet mastered
the essential invisibility
Still it works
drawing them like flies
to your sweetened skin.

Sometimes I have to laugh
thinking
honey is just bee vomit.

Sunday, January 23, 2011

sanity

Deceit deceit
to be so ill and look well
oh fie on you and falsehood
singing your dirge
as a easy lullaby
that I find myself humming
in the still moments of the day
Sacrilege and horror
to mourn you without knowing
to hear you say farewell again
and again
and never yet reply
I am deaf to the loss of you
blind to your fragility
telling stories of your strength
to the silent audience
I wonder what they see
that keeps them so solemn and still
I wonder why they will not look
me in the eye
and why the softest of them
seem to cry
Deceit and despair!
Did you mean to slip away
without a warning, without a whisper?
To leave me at last alone.

Friday, January 21, 2011

collision.

I am clumsy in this cold
too layered to notice
when I brush
or touch
or- shove
against you
another bundled thing
drifting on my periphery
and it is too cold to turn my eyes
to look directly at you
or anything.
The wind acts the playground brute
drawing tears without a sound
and the ice forms quicker
than the salt may break it.
Now looking back
fingers thawed and eyes dried
I apologize.
It was my fault entirely.

Sacrifice

I saw you last night
with the halo of the streetlight
barely brushing your form
tinging you with golden holiness
You moved with your usual grace
through the night
like one well acquainted
and I felt suddenly a stranger
watching you from our window
I did not look away
but reached with one hand
for the switch and with a breath
submerged myself in the dark
closer to you.
You moved down the drive
and stopped before your seeming shrine
to bend with solemn intent and steady hands
a careful priest reaching
against the smooth temple wall
to press and transform
opening the holy cavern.
It took you to your knees
in an easy reverence long practiced
but I watched your hands shake
drawing forth your slender wand
sliding it deep into the gap.
Your head bowed over it's translucent length
and touching it to your lips
it grew golden and heavy
some blessing swelling from the holy
towards your hungry soul.
You filled a glass
and raising it high stood
to upend the chalice
pouring its glowing contents
to the shattered grass
and the green burnt away to gold.

There is nothing stranger I have seen
watching you siphon gasoline
like some holy tithe
against the road that calls you in your dreams.

Monday, January 17, 2011

Midnight

I made my plan to run away
to walk the sides of the road
and they say it's time to sleep
turn off the lights and go to bed
I walk the roads instead
I'll leave you this
posted on a tenuous silver thread
another connection I don't understand
but there you are and here I go.
This is most of me leaving
out the door and to the corner
and I do not look back.
They whisper at the door
saying dear it is time
It is past time to turn out the light.
The signal is green
I am gone.
Turned past the light
into the shadow.
I will walk the sides of the road.
I am the least unknown.

Monday, January 10, 2011

Elements.

Fire that was first
and in its heat breathed out
and there was air-
the denser light
which broadened from it's birth
cooled and fell and flowed
now water ran below the wind
but dared now draw near first flame
for there was doom and black and
thus was earth born- of sorrow new
so we light the candles at the birth
and finish life in earth.

The Petulant Rose.

It has been a long day
and my dress, though still bright
is crumpled at the height
of your little hands always
tugging as your fall behind
or see another in the interminable
fascinating rounds of dogs
that walk sedately on
their ribbon leashes.
If only I had a ribbon to spare!
and yet why not for the smiles and nods
along the boulevards
are no longer for me
given instead by the young hungry women
to you- the little darling
and how they turn discontented
to their beribboned pets
and attempted to solace their empty
left hands with the weight of the ribbons.
Fools.
It has been a long day
of up and down and her hungry
and thirsty and wanting to go home.
I want nothing less but so it is.
An evening of milk and firelight
and ten tellings of the Little Bears.
Oh but I used to dance in the candlelight
and be easy and free
carrying my little dog on a ribbon-
but look she has caught hold of my sash
again
and it feels like I am on the leash.
Come dear we'll go home
It's time for dinner and bed.

Portrait of a Lady

Leaning forward like that
your pearls almost touch
your folded hands-
another thing just out of reach.
The fold in your fingers
is not that of a well-starched sheet
or a crisp ironed sleeve
but of a rose tucked in
around it's greenest self
or a spring
tight coiled.
It seems they might burst
or bloom
with only the right touch
into wings
touching, reaching, everything.