with every change of season
comes a renewed grief,
a blank sky
perfect
in its presentation
of absence;
another letter
written in white ink on white paper,
postmarked yesterday.

even the watermark's translucence
makes the script's invisibility transparent

among the scattered metaphors, the faded
salutation, the unadorned, untouched sheets
of tomorrow, virgin lines spill and keep
alive hope's shallow breathing
in disappearing ink.

the minimalist precision
asks me to be spare
and to
make the most of least.

the same old script of my life
makes a new arrangement,

and when i first opened your non-existent envelopes,
invisible manuscripts caught fire in my palms

now, even with the words we shared
burned to the ground, i still
write and write
toward that dream

poetry is
more seductive than
pornography
and more  dangerous

it dances in tunnels
in veins
and bone marrow

crippled, it cries
that any awkward step
will do

and for those whose hearts
are gentle          and deformed
it holds the limbs
of limping sounds

where there's a wall
poetry
cuts a gate
opens a door
or sets a ladder
there are methods  of torture
you will never recognize
as you give up your maps
of underground passages
where all your treasure lies

there are words that whisper
like crumbling bricks

birds  carrying messages
taped to their feet
and slow light, filtered
through cheap sacking on the windows

poetry is
an emptiness to hold pain
like the vacancy
of a wide-open prairie
where the wind blows
carrying away   your
lost tickets   to the dance

you watch your life
from the outside
see your shoes
gather dust
beneath
your
bed

poetry is
an eternal autumn
you can never rake up
all the falling leaves
that settle
in the creases of your heart

life has been tasting a little bittersweet of late
fruits so sweet they are red
had to have been born of a summer season.
but nights
are turning darker now.  ice cubes with the taste
of lemon in a frosted glass of sweetened tea--
that seems ages ago.

i remember small bits of loveliness
blooming in the orchard where we met
each day-- back when my favorite color
was red.  now the world is turning dull

and my jeans are twisty around the tops
of my fur-lined boots. mornings are bitter
like an unripened pear for breakfast:
a shudder rises from the back
of my throat when i think of your breath
warming someone else's thigh

if i could, i would make memory
of this season by going to you.  with my hands
i would correct your rumpled hair,
the cuts in your aging heart.  we could make
an evergreen space between sun and water,
summer and winter, cover for a quiet love,
each of our arthritic fingers warming to supple
in drops of sweet liquid light

has it really been a whole year
since i said that milkweed silk
blows through the empty chasm
of the wind's door?

love still binds me to the one
whose eyes are the color
of the dying leaves. chilly nights
thicken my heart and drive my dreams
below the frostline.

i have plodded at the speed of light
through another summer. and again
there are thistles and ribbons
caught in my hair, braided
and beaded with stars and stones.

do you frown when you sleep?
do your dreams filter sunlight
and try to hold back the winter?
where have i misplaced my heart?

what tangles in the bough
and snaps the loom?
what remembers
the dead and grows
steadily toward them?

nothing has really changed
since i asked you these things.
autumn is
still falling apples, walnuts,
red leaves, and frost,
and men taking
off their boots, their hearts breaking,
not knowing whether
to admire autumn's ascent
or lament summer's decline

rarely now, i dream
of being loved
amidst mounds of white flowers
crossing seven rainbows
and bending the four winds
to sounds
unknown in any language

the shape of love
is unmapped in any geometry

i once loved you
beneath a cobalt sky
with its first visible stars

last night i dreamed you held me
as shadows lengthened in proportion
to the shortening of the days
until there was nothing left
but etchings and lines
in pen and ink

the lowering heavens
crumbled and fell
into the space
where passions are measured only
by their inexpressible intensities

i don't often let myself remember
how it felt to believe i was loved--

it was the second-best part of my life
that carried the beat of my heart

today it feels like the wind
has taken everything away--
summer, imminent good or bad news,
and the computer technician
who was supposed to arrive
before noon.

sunlight has made it through
the lumbering clouds of rain,
gathering the gloom
into the sky's dark rags.
a fruit fly lands
on a browning slice of apple.
everything is attracted to something--

the slightly fermented scent
is a fly's ambrosia.
i fold up this poem
and press it into your hand
a last rose of summer,
correspondence with the wind,

something of love and of light

verbs are becoming obsolete
nothing is blended in soft pastels
everything's in black
and white
love is no longer a promise
it's a long crossing to yesterday
a continent reachable
only when you row through dreams

but the past is always present in a poem
and never absent from a story
history speaks but we never listen
in our hardened hearts
emptied of spirit
in the end, who isn't up against god
like a shadow of a cut-out shape
reflected in a mirror

reality is unfinished business
light breaks from the
shadowy ridge
eternity is sitting on the rafters

i wanted to write about how beautiful
it was to love you
but someone else
will have to write that poem
someone else
will have to tell that story

sometimes a goodbye can
stay in the air a long time.
like rain stays in the mirror
long after it has stopped raining.
i would rather see tulips blooming
than a few lingering sickly asters,
rather see a dancing window of green
and sunlight than leaden clouds
above lichen-covered bark.

autumn used to remind me of the year
i fell in love with you, the man who became
my husband; those walks up the mountain
and the rustling of leaves and pine needles
when we made love on the ground
in a forest we called the Temple of Karnak.
that was before ticks and disenchantment,
that was before tragedy and divorce.

numbers are the easiest way to calculate
distance, but when the distance is this vast,
i need to measure it in light--
which has been sometimes
dazzling; sometimes
tortured through
the smallest peephole.
i could say i fell in love with a man
largely invented by a pantomimist.
but it's almost become irrelevant--

worse things have come and gone
since you

it's not that i didn't notice it:

all those brief blossoms
and showers of pollen
during the reign of spring

easing into summer,
with its balmy sun--
a far cry from fire and snow

but autumn is upon us now.
mornings are chill,
a breeze against the skin is cold.

the midday sky is burning,
showing off on the balcony
prancing across the murky pond,

afraid of love's passing
and the chance of forgetting
to wrap warmly in light

for its descent into winter.
it's time to put
a summer dress away

now that the colors
are a little more faded.

some of us

will not be making
the white journey this year.
autumn will bring a sparse emptiness--

in its usual blaze
of flaming glory
it takes down more than leaves

some whom i have loved have been
as pitiless as winter rain.  but you
were never one of those--never
slid your eyes away because you were lying,
never, after the first time,
disappeared for long
under time's dormer.
but now i picture your face cleansed
of all emotion, forgetful of pain
as though after a terrible siege
of exhaustion  and i imagine
you have constructed a formal
and mechanical way of remembering me

if you remember me at all.

and i suppose this strategy is no worse
than dull habit or the convolutions
of smeared guilt.

those of us who died partially and live now
are resigned in the comfort of a small world.

unless we misstep one day and find ourselves
in the labyrinth of memory;
and then realize

that we are lost