Poets

    are the keepers of longing,

    ache and ache for the ache of aching,

    take and take for the ache of taking,
           
    lose and lose in the loss of losing

    love and love for the love of loving

    want for the want of wanting wanting,

    long for the flower to grow from stone.

Poets are the keepers of longing,
guardians of desire--

suffering in smoke,
they long for fire.





Love Poem


What happens to love,
that hummingbird of desire,
laden with nectar?

Who sees its final landing
or its noiseless fall
into the forest?

Or its gentle spiral glide,
its slow sinking, a puff
of pin feathers rising in wind?

Neither scholar nor
naturalist, I can offer
nothing certain.

But one time,
love was a big white heron
whose great wings awed me,
enveloped me, led me
to skim the supple racing waters
at dusk.  

Now, it is standing
on one skinny leg, its black eye
blinking, in the dry bed
of an unbending river.


2/06



Speaking  

three days later
in the corner,
where your bed had been,

a gentle breeze
through the half-open window,
I heard you say

be thankful

and then
because you’re a teacher,
when I closed my eyes

as if on a chalkboard
the letters T-H-A
appeared.
                                                   that night
                                                   an earthquake:

                                                  chimney shards
                                                   and gypsum dust
                                                                            the pictures off their hooks,

and your finger pointed at me,
                                                  at me.




Nexus
How to delineate life
                                  from death?
I embrace the Zen monk’s manifesto
           that we manifest
           and are not born
           and therefore
           from that zen-full logic
                                              we do not die.
How seductive that notion
In the face of death,
          especially yours.
So, you told me you would meet me
at the crest of a wave,
just as if committed to coming to shore,

water becoming water.

And I went there in sunshine,
surrounded by blue
to find you, bathe in you,
float in your real you.
But how could I know you, for sure,
not being water myself?
Were you the white spume spewed,
or the heavy churn around my hips,
the strong, jealous undertow,
                                     trying to pull me down?
both of us trying, hoping
not to disappoint.

I want to know the nexus
of the living and the dead.
Maybe it is just
                            abstraction,
                            distraction
from the truth.

(2010)



Now

Moments of now
gather like small stones
in my pocket;
small stones to cobble
my path back home.

This one, a moon stone,
sheet-white, cool,
in the blue-hued night,
warm and soft as skin.

This one, purple as
a bruise, tender,
dark reminder, a
tool to remember
how a foot off a curb
or bite of steak
can show us the trap door,
in unconscious surrender.

This one, speckled
as a starry night,
mosaic of words,
gold and silver,
and streaked with
a tendon of red.

And even this--
the gray one,
slick as rain, that
slips out of my hand,
between my fingers,
as I raise my hand
and wave goodbye.

(2010)


Grief

As if she is standing
at a bus stop
waiting in rain.

Cars pass.
Lights shine on
dirty street water,
tires hiss
like laughter;
even “puddle”
sounds too playful.

Splayed fingers
rush to flatten
that one corner
of her coat
raised gently
by a poke of wind.

Finally,
it comes.

She turns away,
cannot get on,
joins its riders who,
though empty
from their own
sad journeys,
have not been waiting here.

Just over her hollow eye,
a crescent shadow,
the shape of her missing moon.

(2000)