so far this season
has been unseasonably cold
with its sunlight
sprinkled sparsely
on a stone wall

dawn oozes over the hills
like chilled syrup
with a few clouds
stuck in its puddle

the ancient pine begs the wind
to give it back its youthful figure

in late dusk, the meadow
spreads a great shadow

as twilight peers
in at my window
then shakes its head
and walks away

moonlight
drops handfuls of stars
in the tall grass

thoughts settle on their perches.

a single feather drifts down

no news is good news. (there are two
ways to read that--either an absence of news
is good, or all news is bad)

the chimney sweep showed up today
and swept the chimney. (well, not
actually with a broom,
he used several rods that fit together,
a rotating drill rig,
and some chains.) he was full
of news, none of it good.

the creosote was formidable,
the cellar, moldy. ( i first spelled that
like celery without the "y") he told me
that i really need to do something
about the stove and the mold.
( that's what all the guys say)
he doesn't know about my bad spelling.

it's true i once slept with
the chimney sweep
more than once.

but there was a reason for that--

he and i were married, lived in a
simple cabin
and had several children
one of whom
he delivered (sans doctor)

(not exactly true--i did the delivering,
he did the catching.) it's odd
that today he's "sweeping" my chimney.

he has rewritten history, erasing
the part where he abandoned us,
and never bothered with his kids again...

"i'm not into it," he said.

it's true i once slept
with the chimney sweep,
more than once. (once
when i could spell
and i was young.)

you know this is a landscape that
brings me to the brink
as the bitter edges of things
slide into memory

but something
is given back from the abyss--
sorrow dusted off,
calmed by the ferocious
storms of summer

carried by rain
in the resurrection
of the orchard.

there are ghosts of drunks
and dead teenagers
along this mountain road,
their voices echoing along
the curves and sheer bends
of broken guard rails

but there is a soft spot
in everything
even this fierce geography,

and after a slice of moon,
a scrape of sky,
an armful of rain,
the sky leans
towards the absolute

so thick with longing
that it is

almost impossible to breathe

day after day
dark clouds hang around
looking sad
and weeping a few tears.
scattered saplings
gently question the sky:

when will the soft sunlight return?
when will the flowers
dry their petals?
when will people
have real wisdom
instead of laws
and online newspapers?

when will songs well
in a heart heavy with too much news?

but there is only rain
to moisten this sodden earth,
only clouds dark as mountains
gazing around sadly

the shape of the wind
is dictated completely by emotion.
when it lifts the hair on the back of my neck
it takes the shape of a pair of hands.
and when a light rain sweeps across the grass,
the wind hangs its head in sorrow and in shame.

trees are shaped by the wind;
and the color of the sunset
is determined by the shape of the day,
the tides by the roundness of the moon
while clouds take their form
from the skies in my eyes

moths immolated by a candle
give the flare to its flame.
desires weigh thin in time,
hearts become flattened
by the heaviness of advancing years
and become the shape
of a red stranger in a mist
with torn fragments of composure

turning inward to hide

sometimes i believed that love alone
could make it work, like silent, tenacious
spreading of an emerald moss, the greening
of a grey heart.

i'm not sure if what i heard was you
calling my name because
i was so busy calling yours
as if calling is possessing
and each time i breathed your name
i was eager for attachment

as if my mouthing of your name
seemed to say, why is it never clearly mine?
why have we met so late?
why do you appear in my irresolute heart?

in the overlapping of love and departure
in the drowsiness of dream and waking,
a mistake of falling into someone else's heart
also becomes their error.
is it 'forever'?
is it the possessive pronoun 'yours'?

is it existentialism, or lao tzu, or
chang tzu, afternoon tea,
or a couple of borrowed verses?

from the scent of lilac
and the sound of running water
a whole spring is extracted
in the landscape of a poem
the lilac bush is planted right there
in the first line.

a rose bush
is reflected in the window
a bubble is waiting to be scooped up
from the sparkling brook

and from the secret rooms
of a poem,
limbs outstretched on the bed
are mountains and rivers too
with underground rapids
surging toward the middle of the verse
where a peach-flushed ballad
breaks out of the walls of the room

a hand is raised high.
a voice whispers,
i want to be loved
because there is no substitute
for an encounter
of flesh and blood
(he reads the newspapers
eats breakfast
and imagines her brushing her hair)

memories and dreams
are a puddle
that cannot be wiped off
the bed-covers,
the poem is dumbfounded
by the red tongue of desire
that licks the sheets

rivers and streams
burn between thighs
in the seventh verse
and dreams only drift
in your direction
like willow catkins caught by the wind

the name that you whisper
sinks into echoes in the eighth verse.
all night you pace the room
as my fingers nip the candlewick
and you cannot understand why the brook
sobs instead of chuckles
when it flows through the palm of your hand

you are awakened by cold jade
nine thousand candles burn
in nine mirrors in the ninth verse.
a bright moon shines on the sleepless,
a woman walks toward you along the wall
her face an illusion in the mist

she hands you a lock of dark hair
that turns to a wisp of smoke
it is water and will rise
to become a cloud
it is soil and will be trampled
into a path on which you walk
it is a face hiding among the leaves
more despairing than a sunset

her hands
point to the window
where the sun is rising in the fragrant air
a pair of wings fly into the fading moonlight
whispers recede farther and farther away
an echo reverberates in the next to last line--

the window opens and it's dawn

i know it's safe (in this walled city cobbled
out of many a forced metaphor)
to plagiarize my twenty-one-year-old heart
because no one's going to read it
with it's broken promises, vagrant enthusiasms,
befuddling hints, and obliterated faith.
it's an ancient kingdom
whose once-known lines
i'm tracing
in the dark;
mostly history
whose possible future
has not yet been revealed.

in the first fold of morning light
my heart is setting out
like a haggard gypsy caravan, wandering back
to that old copse of trust-filled beginnings,

inching toward an immeasurable darkness,
every year like a door left cracked open,
or a faucet dripping through the night,
or a three-corned tear in silk lingerie. . .

a fully cataloged museum of circumspection
and amputation. (for instance, 'there is always
a moment or two in the course of a theft
when you forget you're stealing something
and on top of that, you can't really stand
all this stealing going on.')

whoever runs off with something ought to
at least take care of it--
(rains, hearts, shameless vows, words
waiting for me to force them
into another bad poem

shaped by a pathetic dream)

perhaps birds
never see the sky
just as schools of fish never see
the water.
earthworms don't see the dirt
that they eat
maggots don't see the waste
that they ingest,

and people don't really see the world
that they have made.
they suffer sad anxiety all the time
and bleed from the sharp points of their dreams

when the night sighs
in the melancholy rain.
damp and mist pass through the door lock
until every inch of longing is an inch of mold.

for a while when we die, mail piles up
outside our door and we are fed on the bones
of dead language.  even if we really believe
that our lives will conclude in a glorious reunion,

the odds are probably against it.
the wind will provide
shadows, mirrors, and abandoned cars,
all dripping through the fog of memory

like rain in the noon of night
on a gray sign over a gate:

The Cafe of the Lost in Time

i  lean my head on dawn's wind
and my hair spreads out along my arm
in my frail, worn sleeves
that are raveled at the cuff
i lay my head on my imagination

and i can see you there
in front of your window
i know you are thinking of
some other history before your life
the wandering and slaughters in founding an empire
or a nation or freedom

the wind comes from a golden sky
but here a cold forest in black ink
regulates my hermit's heart...
you lay your head on my arm

and i can hear the burning and downfall
of cities, centuries, hearts..
weapons abandoned on plains of morning smoke
and a boat quietly waiting

to bear us to an island
beyond time and bloody history