let me just say:    that your voice
is the lasting echo of my heart's calling.
even tonight, when i feel like
i'm a little feverish, a little drunk
on whiskey, you are the river
bridging the speaking 
and the listening banks,
the lintel bright above my face
the threshold dark beneath my feet,

you are all the missing verses
in my poems, the ivy branching around
my ankles, clinging to my knees
entwining every moment of my waking;
my measured safety traded for a future,
my outcome and my belonging;
my heart's steep path--

and everywhere you are
is home to me now.  your words unlock
all the rooms my days wait inside.
you are the burning mystery
beyond your own understanding,
the rest of every story,
the bell tolling night without circumference;

the living light i see by,
the captive i would ransom with my life

i breathe deeply    then close my eyes
and you come into my room.
on a summer day     wild grass has fingers of a song
beneath your feet     are the days we had years ago

no   please don't laugh at me.  i have had sacred moments
let me have some   with you
don't mumble    or crack a joke
no no     that's only part of what   i need

sunbathing on a green carpet  woven completely of light
i thought you liked      the poet   in me
rocks don't really understand    all the things i love
only   those dust motes   in the light      are my kin

love spreads in all directions    like a breeze
that starts with you    yet also dreams beneath your breath
and is forgotten   not far away   but beneath the surface
or even very far away    walks into a room that yearns for you
even though you have never entered it

why do the geese cry
and mountains slouch forward
why does the sky pour fire at midday
why are there so many of us who have forgotten how
to praise those we love

why is your name carved into
this damn fucking rock ledge, why
was kilroy never here,  why are the powers
of friendship so persuasive?

 you tell me.

human bites are up 23% this year,
and dog bites are down.

why is the earth shuddering under
its growing weight of concrete?
we are not far from what holds us--
it's no worse than face-to-face distance.
i've had that, haven't you?

(memory : when i visited Father in new hampshire,
after six-course dinners, i would  tiptoe
out to feel the dewy crisp of leaves,
weigh apples in the palm of my hand,
bobbing the branches. i thought i saw
a shadowed face watching me from the window
while i climbed thick
limbs with chinese etiquette, riding
the heavy wood like a lady, legs
swung over to one side;

the rest of this poem has nothing
to do with Father,) except for
the hereditary heart disease of passion
and decorum.
...................................................

side-saddle is only one of the ways
i want to ride you, baby
while

unborn sounds are torn from my throat
in a wild gallop impossible to reign in
on memory-foam pillows.

impaled on the splinter between dreams
and waking,

i think of fingers, hands gripping
the small of my back;  the sides of my waist.
i lean against the wall, spent, legs too shaky
for walking away now

the relief of cloth pulled off.
your hands
drawing my hands down to you.

i stroke

and then

i mouth you.

i will show you  but you already know
how i move, groan,
lift my hips insistently
in  a love of rhythm--

how i yawn.

we can do anything and everything in dreams,
nothing is impossible.

the silver edges of your gaze
have cut my heart in two

you own me now
in the place where
it's always warm

i long to be a poem
on red paper,
a softly haunting verse
opening my thighs

in a sinuous invitation

i am dreaming of a harbor
layers of moonlight rush in
making the night translucent
the smooth-worn steps ascend to the sky
leading to a world in my dreams

i'm back home
bringing a lantern to my mother
the lantern melts a glacier
and a little girl tosses her head
to shake down a whole night of stars

the wet wind blows past
the shore's aging forehead
a shining future visits every window
father walks toward the skyline
outlined in the beams of the setting sun
he turns around
making a deep bow

the wave's crest brushes the decks and the sky
a star looks into the compass
for its own daytime position
no, i'm not a sailor
just a born landlubber
but i've hung my heart like an anchor
on a ship's gunwale

i want to go out to sea with my dreams

an enigmatic painting framed in the heart,
desire, four horsed, dragging
a wagon with the brakes on.

the body's need beaten down
with wildflowers
twined through links of heavy chain--

the hum of burnt-out filaments
in a light bulb overhead, barely bright enough
for late night reading. behind the window
is a painting, a face appearing
far more distant than it is

and your own face hovering in front of it
wanting in. watermelon seeds in the belly
of a woman four thousand years old; what survives
is evidence of hunger.

And i have loved you cleanly.

if love is a prelude to a paradise
that i can never enter, then i will travel
to the edge of my ruined map,
and that will be enough.
there will still be wilderness;

still be beauty.

father said that while we sleep
we live another life
somewhere else--perhaps
another girl with my features
on the other side of the world
is living my life too

he also said that when we make choices
the un-lived strands of our lives
trail behind us,  splitting again and again
becoming tangled, and when we want to,
we can will ourselves into those strands
and experience the life
we could have chosen

i can feel the strands of our lives
touching, yet separate
stirring and settling into each other
on the empty sidewalks.  your face
and mine shimmer on the hazy skin
of the pond, shivering as swans
swim through our reflection.

we are always there. we have danced
inside the edges of a salt circle
whose magic safety was only
an illusion.  we dance around each other
with a shy grace as if our hearts
put together are a map of buried treasure
retaining flecks of light
from another life we could have chosen

this is the architecture
of loneliness:
beside a river full of black boulders,
a window
in which there are scenes
of families
while a little match-girl
stands outside
in eternally
falling
snow

this is the architecture
of loneliness:
a kitchen
where a woman
stands at the stove
staring into space
not noticing
that the water
has all boiled away

white sand accumulating
in the bottom
of an hourglass

all sounds coming from the outside
yellow specks of dust floating
in the empty rooms
of the heart

love spoken
only from memory
in a voice raspy from lack of use

a dead wasp on the windowsill

this is the architecture
of loneliness:
the point of transparency
where ice melts
or a cotton fiber
unravels the S twist of its existence
or an autumn leaf begins to redden
or on the horizon
below a cloud
lines of rain
(like you)
vanish in air

1. i send him letters written on apricot rice paper flecked with gold, that he cannot read
2. they are not written in chinese
3.calligraphy is art, not language
4. love is the language of art
5. he grinds his teeth in his sleep but only when he isn't three sheets to the wind
6. which is never
7. unanswered questions open a black rift in heaven
8.questions scrape on the mind like a blackboard when it dilates into darkness
9.you can hear a night-blooming cereus unfold a blossom
10. your knees crack when you squat down to talk to a small child
11. the living expire like smoke in the mountains
12.he has dreamed of rubbing her nipples with his palms
13.he has savored the thought of unbuttoning her blouse
14.we zigzag when we encounter a point of resistance
15.understand does not mean condone
16.neither does forgive
17.goldenrod and loosestrife break my heart
18. we are now nowhere near anywhere
19. the mind aches to see such distance
20. the moon has no permanent dark side
21.the dead strike the tuning forks of the minds of the living
22.like light surging into a honeycomb gold, you came and went all at once
23. grief is incandescent
24.my heart is a clock that records loss and loss
25. a hurricane is heading this way

once life ran wild through my house.
poetry was a bowl of air--nothing more;
love poured like a river into silence.
this morning as i drove down the
road over the mountain, i thought about

how impatient i always am to get there--
to the end of the road, the story,
the waiting.

but the most dazzling star is the one
that shows us the way
when moss has covered our memories
and there is a forest behind us,
a desert before us, and we are trudging
for our whole lives
in the middle of an unmarked way.

poetry is the sound of the tumbling
of silken pebbles when the
heart's walls fall down,
light first enters, and you can
step clean through--

in other words, a journey
plotted with a compass of
magnetized longing
where the line of sight
barely reaches the mirage-
like edges

of a far horizon

it's a longing of the five senses
like an expanse of water
with many scattered islands,
an archipelago
of spices, it's
me wanting you to hold me
and say nothing;
say something..

a woman and a man
aching from a series of
desires-- to touch, to kiss,
to press together full length,
to enter, to move, to pulse,
to remember;
to never forget

the cry of a hawk
vanishing into aquamarine air,
her rhythm climbing the stairs,
her bare ass under her short skirt,
his eyes flipping onto high beams

sexual splendor
with no referents to time.
a dream or a memory in slow motion,
white orchids blooming
on the windowsill where there
are green glass apples catching the light

a wind chime complaining of rain.
her face, and later
plum colored bruises
shaped like fingertips
on her thighs,
lightning flickering
above the tree line.
full moon  night air  single rain
moment of sunshine

his lips touching
her ear.
chance, intention, hunger,
a longing of the five senses
heart-shaped leaves at dusk

the parallactic angle of starlight

his entire weight relaxing
onto her body