back in those days
when i still believed in the
unbelievable, i would have loved you so
deeply underneath a lifetime of
the sweetest dreams as dense as night
as strong as undercurrents
you would have discovered
what it was like to be loved like that--
stinging and tender...

or perhaps you have been loved like that
by others repeatedly
and it meant nothing.

i always daydreamed of
being held by you
under the stars
on a foggy mountaintop
as the thunder grumbled in a foreign tongue
and i felt the electric familiarity
of your kiss

and told you that if you ever left me
my heart would turn to deep sleep
and somewhere for years to come
i would dream of acts i could not name
in the darkness of my heart
that would sneak your cherished body
into the thorny terrain of my blood,

my blood that now
has become as treacherous
as you are

this morning as i watched
the blurry moon
sinking into the open arms
of the hills,

i knew it was headed your way,
breathless and alone
drifting
across the long sky

like a soft blur of words
lifted from my own breathing

i remembered pieces of an earlier life--
a life when i put two sledge hammers
in the shed; and failed to throw away
two defunct weed whackers

a life where i could hide
in the tall summer grass
without the fear of ticks

my window is a lantern
dreaming of sleep
as the bright morning
skims the rim of cliffs;

i swim through the shadows
sighing in the mist

sorrow always invades, perhaps at noon
perhaps at dawn,  perhaps when
the air is still and the morning is measured out
in teaspoons and the coming afternoon
starts sweeping the ground

and you walk carefully down the steps
like a frail ghost
which is a little sad because
the sunlight turns suddenly into
a tired glance  ... you wonder if flowers
in a vase or butterfly grass--
those seasonal expressions
replicated in a greenhouse--

are they as good as real?

all the furnaces of summer
have not purified your heart of all its passion
though now it shines brilliantly like a dagger
too dangerous to give to another
for fear of hurting yourself

your heart drums thunderously
and in the looking glass
you think you see
a face like an old temple grown with moss

your wife calls...
the master of ceremonies on TV
sees you and smiles.  at night you are
an apparition that has lost its way
somewhere in my midnight pines

if only i could hold
your rustling desire
close to me in the soughing wind

but when you arise each day
only dreams and last night's fallen hair
are left on the pillow
you remember Ali Baba and wonder

if there is really a secret door

sometimes you come to me
like a strange light in a crystalline dream
and your smile is as soft as the flame
of a red candle.  such thoughts can comfort
me through quiet and long, lonely nights.

a thought of you is like a swallow's wing-tip
touching the water, a whiff of gentle breeze
leaving no shadow to be caught, no light
to be traced;  a falling star.

on white sails, tranquil with warm dreams,
i fly out on a river, across the hills
through blue clouds and the depths of night
and i lose myself, thinking the amber stars are your eyes...

next to this dream, i want no other world.

long are the groping fingers of light
and deep are the shadows of two lovers
on the wall painted gold by the sun.

the beautiful, the terrible, the profane:
a tongue, the tip of a lizard's tail,
a kiss, an intimate touch, a sighing glance,

the setting sun, the shadows, two in a bed.
this sweet dream is my soul's heartfelt prayer.
i am a devout disciple of sin,
i want to see my worldly priest disrobe

my heart is weak, but still beats
day and night, still a kind of life
of anticipation

the rainy season seems to be ending
it's a good time for dreaming
(modern literature doesn't do much dreaming
but in classical love stories, it is still life)

i want to advise you to travel, to see seagulls fly,
to stay overnight in an unknown place.
tomorrow i am going to do that,
i am going to stay overnight
in your heart

you may sit by the window, sometimes
rueful as the day darkens.
(you wanted to make a few vows
in cherry blossom season
that weren't yours to make...

and before you could open your mouth,
love had tidied its hair and left)
"anyway, it's all useless" you thought
"i am living," you said, "though i don't know
what for, this is still life..."

this poem is a drawing for you.  a bowl of fruit,
a table in a humble country home,
nothing really above you or better than you,
just an ordinary woman who loves you
who is slightly disembodied in this medium

and if you ever get lost, please remember
the picture that i drew of a stone lantern
it will light your way to a grave on a hillside
without a marker, but you'll know
that it's still me, it's still life

love can do many things. it can
smooth out the mountain's wrinkles
and make you hear water flowing
in your heart, give you a vision
of a woman far away in the dazzling sun,

or make you hear a fragmented tune
filling the flat distance swaying in the wind
while morning sunbeams splash up drops
of light from the edge of eternity.
suddenly you might find a memory
from a seventeenth century hero
tumbling in the thunderclouds
building up over the plowed fields.

love can make you wake
in a pool of hot sweat
with tears that secretly fall
at midnight when you face the tree shadows
swaying outside the window
it can make a prisoner of conscience
hold tight to the determination to be indifferent
until a voice says, "my heart
must become vaster than this, otherwise
what can i rely on as i journey?"

there is nothing else,
just the prosody of love
and tears kicking leaves along the road
as it walks against the wind..
i knew you once, before we came here
we met in an empyrean no longer charted
in memory's latitude and longitudes
then lost each other in thunder
and birth and the stream of time..

i am younger now than i was
when we parted in a previous life
but you must recognize me
floating down your way at the union
of mountains and rivers where floating clouds
are flying gowns, spring water glides into a ravine
the sun shines through chilled light
and once again, whether we want to or not,

we meet and love each other

night has ended, and i hear
the wind's footsteps in the garden,
ever lighter. rain writes calligraphy
on the window and beyond the mountains
there is april rain and farther out
there is no one.

i hear time's swift-turning wheels
rushing toward summer where fruit
is growing to the golden gleam of temptation
and falling beauty.

summer i hope that you
will not change your mind when spring's lilacs,
beckoning in the dusk, wave
forth some misty spring promises

even  though  those who once
shared summer with me
have become dimly obscure
and intangibly thin, slipping through my fingers;

slipping through my heart's summer longings.

take a poem and lock it
center-heart--it's your center
of gravity.   you'll keep your balance
that way, even when the moon
leaves its seal on dark events.

sometimes when the shadows
of marriage make an emergency turn
or a dictator is elected by the newspapers
a poem is a mirror that points the way
and knows your soul by heart

and it is your moment in solitude
to savor dignity and the fire of a dream
the ashes of the familiar
and a sun that props up the sky anew
the poem in your heart
is the only window on the long view

i will never laugh at  how
you measure out your days in teaspoons,
and mourn like a frail ghost
looking in my window.

i wish that this mountain stream
behind my house
could shatter into shimmering stars
hung along the night

by the Seven Sisters of the Milky Way
like a silver hammock
rocking you to sleep

but tonight i am dressed in lace
that makes a pattern on my skin
like tangled sun and shade.

let me come with you
cheek to cheek,
our fingers intertwined
moon-shod and young
with the April wind

through ten thousand miles
of words and pictures, wind and rain,
over a hundred years of sparkling stars
along this weedy path of dream,

like two apparitions who have lost their way