Time: A Sonnet

Barriers

Oil and water,

we drift together

but we do not mix.

Unfamiliar music in the other room

shields him with sleep,

angers me awake.

My mind is in the tangible,

his is in dreams.

We keep moving—

one enters, the other slides out,

cutting smiles with silence.

No doors, few walls;

we stare at anything,

never around corners.

Soon I will enter the other room,

slip beneath the same sheets.

try for similar dreams.

But the hollow made by

sagging blankets between us

only reminds me that

barriers still tangle us.

Weep

“The bitter cries of thousands of households

can be heard above the noise of battle.”

I cover my ears.

I’ve stopped the paper,

not to repel the battles lost or won

across the earth

but to distance my mind and heart

from the torments next door.

The voices raise;

I shower to escape in

spattering drops. The arguments

stronger, I drown them with

music louder than I like.

The willow by their fence

does poorly since it leans away

even as I do.

We both weep, able to do nothing.

By Chance—Each Other

Turning into each other on

that corner of strangers, we bent

and rose together. Different destinations

now changed by chance, we took turns

shielding the wind that blew our hair

into knots, beating between our shoulder blades.

The edge of one movement bleeding into another,

we followed the light as it marked us,

like something beginning to open,

something near a memory.

The sky deepening, we walked

silhouetted, out bodies tied by threads,

reaching toward home.

The cotton sheets rolling in waves,

we joined each other;

I touched your body in the dark,

your fingers traced my outline,

shadows meeting in stillness.

Parting in the morning,

we gave no promises save this: to answer

the knock at the door should we, by chance,

meet again.

The Chair

The tooth marks still show

around the bottom rungs—the puppy

long forgiven, the chair monuments

his growth and mine. The nick

on the top is Uncle Joe

throwing his choo choo at Mama;

the cigarette burn on the arm

is the night Chris was born.

Grandpa never knew, when he

made this chair, that it would

catalog our lives.

Around Corners

“Someday they may cut a road through.

Until then, you have to go around

corners to get there.”

The effort is too great.

Once, I saw light around the corner,

light which might have made

seeing you easier.

Having walked far, now,

in darkness,

the corners promise

nothing,

and I am no closer to

finding you than

before.

Reflections

Days are measured by the

glances and words remembered;

the turn of a head, reflections

in glass, frozen smiles.

The yearning after moments preserved

in cinematic climaxes;

emotion brings the small things back

again and again.

The whole is too large to be seen.

It is fragmented into sights and smells

that harbor a desire, a wish that

intrusions not disturb the wakeful dreams.

The visions continue with no outward signs

but the minutes lost in thought,

and the sometime wish to

hold onto fading days.

The Source of Joy

The deepest well of joy

is only seen through sorrow;

given pain,

I know what my pleasures were.

So here, then, is the reason:

to afterward go knowingly,

and when a spring is found,

to follow it to its source.

For Terre

Do not battle anymore.

The fire behind your eyes

gives you away: running

toward the others, you run

from yourself. There is no need.

Do not be afraid of roots,

of those who would call your name,

of the darkness. Move toward

your self, finding balance

in the hand outstretched.

Keep your desires, but

do not let them consume you.

You are more than your

accomplishments, your

concerns…

and let the ones

who would be gentle

touch you.

Dream

Having only just found the light

behind your eyes, it shines tenfold

because I know it will soon be gone.

Perhaps, since time is short, we could

condense the ritual:

leave introductions aside and breathe

each others’ insides,

travel in the same vessels,

if only for just a while, intensely.

Let us not let this escape unknown.

Drowning

He’s gone under, I guess,

the days rolling over him,

floating and turning with the currents.

Bobbing buoy-like, caught

by sand and seaweed, he

aimed his beacon toward the shore.

He died from lack of air.

I die from lack of movement.

It doesn’t matter which is worse—

the waves keep returning,

carrying the dead home.

Fear

What would you do

if you found me

crawled-up and gone

inside?

What would I do

if I was

crawled-up and gone

inside

and you didn’t find me?

The First Day

The feeling is different.

We set up boundaries,

warp and weft, weaving

private tapestries, adding others’

spices, bells, beads, cords,

frayed or tied.

This morning’s light belongs

wholly to itself; it remains unhinged,

the edge of one moment bleeding

toward another. Some would say

these are not separate, but all one—yet

I can see the beginnings without the ends.

One is the other.

II.

Direction creates the difference.

Moving down a road, what becomes of you

depends on what you see. Last week’s vision

has nothing to do with this cow in this field,

her bell clanking, the dog chasing her home.

I have walked this far to look around:

the leaves that flush with red

in a late autumn sky, the chanting

of night birds flying home, my vague shadow

crossing the grasses. This blood, this being,

this mind, made ready for this day,

tell me I was right when I realized I was alive

and knew I was headed in the right direction.

For My Father

Through the holes

in the grade-school fence

you spoke to me and smiled.

My hand reached through;

your long smooth fingers

gathered mine.

Parted by endless diamond links

and others’ words,

I knew you would go away again.

When I saw you last,

I had grown beyond your memory.

Your hands, less large, were motionless;

my eyes, mirroring yours, searched

for a link between us.

When we parted,

we ran for fences.

For Philip

Your hands and arms were mine—

I’d take your words if I could,

and your eyes.

You’ve seen more perhaps, and

differently,

and I’d like to be that for a while.

Your difference impressed me;

people had looked the same

for so long. Looking

at you and feeling your words,

I remembered that we come

from similar seeds

but grow separately.

We look alike

but at different things.

The Gift

I treasured the music box you gave me:

I felt, young as I was, that the song it played was special

and although I did not know the tune,

the song meant much to me.

It was all I had of you for a long time.

When I grew older, people talked about you.

The things they said were said in anger and distrust

to turn me away from you.

I would listen to the music box,

the song it played then familiar,

and think about what you must have been.

I don’t know if it was what they said

or just growing up without you,

but I remember thinking once, not long ago,

that you probably ran into a store

on the night before Christmas,

and asked what to buy a little girl

and that you probably never even

heard the tune

before it was bought and paid for.

The song is still special to me

but, less naïve now,

I realize you were human,

and I was only a little girl.

Memère

I watched her plant geraniums

on hillsides said to be

too steep for an old woman.

Her buckets of cuttings surrounding her,

she stooped to plant, the light

running down her back.

We played tic tac toe outside

on an old table facing the sun.

When the paper ran out, we used

the table itself. I watched her laugh

and raise a hand to steady the hair on her head.

When she died, she lay on crisp sheets

in a bed made by others.

I stood near her knowing

she should have died on a hillside,

her fingers caked with soil,

the wind drying beads of water

from her cotton dress.

I could not cry, even in that white room,

for her hands, the most I’d known of her,

were not far away.

Gus and Bess

You lived there, too, Uncle,

but you thought it was her house.

Oceans of matchless silverware

she catalogued like socks, in pairs.

Plucking your battered six-string,

you watched as

she busied herself,

alternating verses with her parrot.

You never said a word as she

swept her thoughts outside, yet

you gathered even these,

thinking she did not see.

When you died, Uncle,

all she had were your mended shirts,

folded like maps,

a pipe she’d been saving,

a bed suddenly too large.

The guitar stood mute in the corner.

Even the bird said nothing.

She followed you within two months,

tongue without groove,

no purpose left.

Uncle, it was always her choice.

Highland Avenue

The empty lot beside the house

contains the same weeds we

brought in bouquets to mother;

the same brown car lies rusting

upon its blocks, still waiting

for repair. Nothing has changed.

But as I walk through this field that

once was a shark-filled ocean

where we boated over reefs in

cardboard ships, I believe

that, even now, if I looked

hard enough, I could see waves.

Paper Boats

I cannot summon your past to

swim before me in this rain; its moments

are not for others’ eyes. Instead

I call my own, greying monuments

and sparkled images of things seen,

never touched. We ride our separate

paper boats, adrift in puddles

reflecting the same trees, the same sky—

you and I and many others, all going.

Let us anchor together in the mist, our

shadows crossing, and share our sight,

looking in the same direction for a time.

I hadn’t realized

until you started hitting back

that I’d given you

that many chances

for self-defense.

Seasons

I’m in the winter of my soul—

where is the door to summer?

Too old to claw and cry at the

snows that surround me,

I wait—

believing in the sun that will

thaw this chill in my heart

and light my way outside,

that I might shed these

layers of sadness

and run naked in the dawn.

1 March 1985

Dreams

In dreams, I see the meadow, the damp days

and before—

the path between the trees, rough

with acorns and shadows.

On this road, heading east, toward

the moon that drifts like a yellow eye in the night,

we drink and laugh,

three refugees,

trailing the past out the window

like streamers.

There are fields now.

The moonlight

hangs upon the wet air and

laces the stalks together.

If this were Idaho, we might stop.

I remember chasing cows that

strayed into the long grain, their eyes white,

and the scattering of mice whose

nests we had disturbed.

We have a long way to go.

Droplets gather on the windshield,

fusing and gently running, little rivers, and

the wind beats the leaves against bark.

I am brought back.

Journey

We did not touch that day

when you and I, turning from

all we’d been, traveled toward

foreign coasts without looking back.

Six months have passed

and still I wake in the night

to our silence.

With miles of windless sand

between our palms,

I cry for the lack of rain.

Had I gone that day

down to the cliffs with you

when the scent of ocean was

fresh on your cheeks,

my darkened veins might flow salt water

and I’d have no need of tears.

Instead I ran from

your remnants tossed aside,

your odor lingering upon my breath.

Now you are bound in a current

searching for other shores,

and I face the mountains,

looking toward the sun.

Yet in this morning’s stillness,

I believe I saw a shadow

and I know I have seen it before.

Turning to the water,

I will look again.

Morning

Lying near the cold window

sunlight struggling to warm me

I can feel your tugging movements

to evade the sun’s rays.

You shift with effort

grasping your pillow

easing toward your edge.

Your body turns in shadow

Your eyes close yet more tightly

against the light.

If I were to touch you,

you would heave away,

this being a greater disturbance

than any light.

I will await your awakening

your morning kiss

your movement out of bed.

Sonnet

My love, you bring me pleasures in this time

So num’rous, I can only think of this:

That if this life is but a transient clime

In which the soul is chained and Heaven missed,

If we must care so little for this day

And think more of the next than of this mind,

Then I am glad in having lost the way

In wishing we could happ’ly stay behind.

While others cast their thoughts up to the sky,

Mine will be rooted deep within your own.

My hand in yours, o love, my heart, my eye,

Will rest in your sweet flesh till we are gone.

Then come, my love, let’s spend our days on earth,

And there make an eternity of mirth.

The Party

Candles flutter in breaths

behind the glass, hazed with

voices and music. Dances

made from memory, the

glitter hums erotic phrases

to the backbeat.

I sway, watching the motion

and the noise, pores fused in

fantasy, open dreams in darkness.

From behind the smells, the

opulent costumes masking hearts

disguised as madmen, I can

join in spirit and yet remain aloof:

these are momentary fancies,

gala feasts of frivol and fun.

Tempered with the deepening air,

I can sense the wholeness, the

dynamics from high to low, the

evenness pervading. Here and away

I remain.

Once inside, I did not know

whether to stand or fall—

the chaos made me weak.

I felt alone, surrounded by

all I ever knew; dwarfed in

catalogues of haste and

waste turned meaning.

Where to go?

I stood, myself alone,

and felt the walls come,

erected as strongholds in the

storm. No longer cuckold,

I cried for freedom and

knew I’d tasted it

many, many times.

The Ritual

You took what I held

in my hands—

you stripped the lines

from my palms.

Slicing through skin,

you excavated cleanly,

draining fluids,

stealing precious tissue

To seam your wounds.

Disarmed by habit,

I watched you plow ahead,

counting furrows of the ritual.

No more.

You will reach deeper,

but your hands will

return empty:

I’ve scraped my insides out,

carving jagged spines

and spawning acid sap,

leaving you nothing.

Mothwing

Silver glimmer on my

fingertip

once mothwing, now dust,

rising in a tiny cloud.

14 August 1978

Teachers

for E.W.

Your eyes were what moved me

and your mouth,

shaped large and corner-wide,

always smiling, exposing

a tongue alive with sound.

You sang with Billie Holiday,

looking out the window,

tears in your eyes.

I was never there and

I may never understand.

But you moved me with sparks

and slow drones,

anecdotes of life in NYC,

my youth trying to mingle with yours.

Having opened my eyes

to the glint in yours,

you opened my mouth

in reply to your words,

your languid tongue

painting the steppes of Russia

and the Black Sea.

I speak to you now

for the spark and the words

are part of me,

shining and singing to others.

My Daddy

Ten years since you died,

and ten years before that I hadn’t seen you.

Never really knew you at all, I guess.

So what’s this string that holds you

to my gut?

A little girl and a grown-up man

with nothing in common except a name.

I would have wished for more.

Maybe the string is stronger because

that’s all there was:

my hand around your finger,

my body in your lap.

I might have dreamed you up

except that I have your picture.

I keep it filed away.

I’d like to hang it, but then

people would ask who you were,

and I could only answer, “Daddy.”

Like going blind, perhaps it

would have been easier if I’d never

known you at all than to

always wish I’d known you better.

The Stranger

I watch her and grow angry.

The resignation and detachment

I discover in her eyes

might have been seen in mine

once—

I want to strike out at the root of

her sorrow.

Her steeled face is yet familiar,

the flick of her head

as she shakes thoughts away.

I am angered that,

through reaching,

she has been hurt.

I am sorry that

she could not

steel herself sooner.

I can see no light in her eyes

because she sees none.

I am caught by her pain

and frenzied searching

for something soft to hold.

She flicks her head again,

her hands open to the air.

I can do nothing

but watch this stranger’s eyes

and become angry again.

Lonesome

While I long to dance and sing,

you sit quietly, unmoved.

You dream of going to sea;

I’m afraid to swim.

Once a month, perhaps,

we dance together,

singing sea chanteys,

sailing across a hard floor.

In the garden,

I sing to the roses,

you gaze at the ocean.

We sit on the same bench for hours

in separate thoughts,

lonesome worlds.

Your Armor

While the others mapped the chinks

in your armor, you asked “why?”—

the answers, no doubt different, still

amount to this:

to find the sources of your pain,

to know which barbs might pierce the tender skin,

to see you in a wholeness,

not only strong and shining.

Some might admit to power through this knowledge;

some might confess a desire to protect—

all this because of love in many ways.

So bear with those who search beyond the

outer layers of your self,

to have the rest of you, all of you,

not settling for less.

The World and You

In the night, when your eyes are dark,

when the moon is scattered in tree branches,

I give myself to the world

but more especially to you.

With you I share the night dreams

and the source of myself. In your eyes

lives my heartbeat, in your palms, my flesh.

My call reaches beyond mountains

and is heard by the world and you.

But only you answer.

Sonnet

To write is made more difficult each passing year

Because of past achievements, the history of the art;

To try to meet old standards, successes yet so near,

distresses creativity and stifles thought.

To write without reflection of works I have seen

Is yet impossible and wrong; they influenced me,

And I can not reject their part, the use they have been.

They are a part of what I long and try to be,

And so I will work with them, against them no more—

And to thus acquire strengths I had not hoped to own.

The unity of past and present brings me closer

To my ability, heightened by the union.

I can now write, and now I hope to show in rhymes

The meaning that I’ve found enjoying others’ lines.

Some Haiku Poems

The stars become more

distant as my eyes fill

with silent tears.

Alone, I remember my friends

and I am with them

more than when I am.

Frozen icicles of time

are lodged within my mind

to keep me warm.

I watch as people,

caught in whirlpools of love,

try to set new courses.

The father reaches to

grasp his newborn daughter,

the promise of love in his eyes.

Forests, nighttime,

cleanse me and leave me free

to return to the city.

I am a tree as often as

I am a woman—I know not

yet how to love a man.