a long time ago that was
not too long ago, my tears carved
riverbeds of sea water. my son was a
nomad in my dream's desert.
love was a song i memorized
in the seventh grade when the sun
wore a shawl as red as blood
and the forest wore anklets of moss
and dark humus.

a long time ago that was
not too long ago,
the fields bent their knees
like slumbering horses. i stepped out
from the patterned green sheets
and perfumed pillow
into the golden radiance of autumn.
in my eyes there were flying leaves
and fallen fruit as the sparse sky
flung a white shroud over me.

a long time ago that was
not too long ago, spring spread its traceries
through my veins. a trembling flower
bloomed in my heart like a star.
beneath me ran a river of living images
filled with tender questions.
my father's house was a nomad
wandering through my dream.
pages once open closed again
on sighs and muffled footsteps

that still reverberate through my life

while science is searching for evidence of evidence,
the sky stretches like fitted linen over the hills
without a crease, pegged to the spikes of leafless trees.
the sun falls behind the ridge quicker than lovers can hide,
sooner than the taste of starlight on lips
that are falling into memory.

from your description of a funeral i pondered
how we flow through time at the speed of life,
passing through each other , dewdrops dying
in unbelievable haste .  there is
no such thing as a circular river.

held in the savage teeth of the clock
we are heart-hammered into the eternity
of whatever comes next.  be as nothing
in the floods.  i can see you clearly, walking
through the meadow of sadness,
leaning on your newly acquired cane.

if there must be a god in the house,
let him dwell quietly.
and so we pass through time
cleanly naked at first, then full of the blame
of our own guile, clothed and worried with age,
and rising above us,
almost lost from sight,

the balloons of our dreams

there are days when every moment

reminds a mirage of an oasis.
the long fingers of the sun
keep leaving marks
like tracks made
by the tiniest bird

they say that people
must have some basis
to bear each day of life-- some
crowded moments of denial,
days of silence with slivers in a heart

that is like the black box on a plane
fallen from the sky
it  keeps the secret
but not the truth

and so it is with memory
stopped at the crossroads
of the ocean and the sky
tending the broken grail,
the altar of truth,
the soul's smallest oasis,
a deep well of unknowable secrets

this is my poem. so in it, i can rewrite  the ending
and make it happy--the moon rising over the
green meadow, where the house is on the hill
overlooking it.  the pond regards the wildflowers
with a fond eye, and the man and woman
lying in the magic bed by the window, caressing,
are also entirely of my invention.

with the utmost pleasure and actual transcendence,
they gaze out on the landscape.  the woman
gets up from the bed; gathers together the front of
her blue silk robe.  the man catches the sash and unties it,
the silk falls down her shoulders like a waterfall, freeing
her arms, her breasts, her waist, and he
pulls her back down beside him on the bed.

but i could just as well have said:  the moon's face
is half-covered with soot.  a cloud of insects hangs
over the sodden meadow. in a house on the hill
a woman sits alone by the window.  she cannot weep--
loss is too deep and too dry for that relief.
a 1980's phone generates all the coming years of sorrow.

on the bedpost a shabby chenille robe is shedding threads.
in the woman's heart an ember of hope flickers
in an eternal sepulcher.  it can't go out.  how the man
has changed her life in one day!  but she will never know
which day or why. and above him the moon is like a severed ear.
his mind is like a cold cave, but there
are deeper chasms in his heart
in which his mind is changed and he returns to her.

oh, the stories i can invent!  oh the myriad endings! oh
the contradictions when i have the characters, but not
the motives and not the ending!  i can fill the pages
one by one with words raining in the meadow. but it is
fate that will complete the story, that will clear away
the detritus of such a dime-novel-romance author.
and it is you who closed the book
and walked away,

happy ending notwithstanding

raindrops fall straight from the trees
october is wet in my hair,
flash flood warnings are in my eyes.

on the balcony, a spider's web
hangs with pearls of rain.
i wish i could say: forgetfulness is bliss

but i am well aware of who is leaving.
the drizzle of october can't extinguish
the overwhelming mist of imminent departure

the diamond needle on the soul's fine groove
picks up circle by circle
an entire lifetime. your brother's backward glance,
your last gaze of goodbye

these are instants of indescribable sorrow
that cleave the heart. fate dissects with
an unavoidable sharp blade on love's operating table.

i cannot make a sound-- i am an empty jade cup
crashing to the marble floor of life
and the shattered chips are crying,
looking helplessly at each other
"such a lot of memory,
spilled..."

under the feckless moon
my heart is a crystal palace
where all my love is hidden

and i hold all happy instants
as eternity.  how long is eternity?
this day, today,
knows
how short eternity is

and how fragile,
how gently it curls in my palm.

let the rain flow past
let years and years flow past
let them flow through my fingers
soul and soul with touching wings

i still hold your hand, a restless bird.
too tight, i fear stifling it; too loose
i fear it might take wing,
only a handful of sorrow will remain.

i fear a palmful of blood
cannot warm my heart's loneliness.

i wonder: if the angels were all massacred
and the rain of comets fell ceaselessly
would there be people to shed tears?

if one day you should pound heavily on the nine gates
would there be spirits to open the door?
who can hold the dragon-wind of fate?

who can rewrite the palm or astrology?
who can rewrite the palm and not rewrite astrology?
you are in my palm, i'm in yours
let the rivers flow backwards
holding eternity in a blink
let the blink of my eyes hold eternity

for almost a year now, the bees
have been gathering behind my house.
the old apple tree is broken
and the girl who sat in its branches
sits in the window.

an empty envelope crosses autumn
like a stuffed swallow
on a dark cloud.

who can stop the minute hand from
meeting the hour hand?
not all midnights point to twelve.
at the last strike, the moon has a tantrum
inside a glass clock.

i take out my golden hours
and hold them to the light.
and i am telling you,
flowers could bloom at a moment's notice...

evening comes, along with the poet's wrinkles.
my prince has
one foot scaling the ladder,
the other stuck in cement

full measure of day, now, and my mind
is a room with a halo of light in the corner
where my fingers trace the yoke
of your collarbone, your mood
as elusive as the dams behind your eyes.

i touch you like stroking raised hairs.
if i lay my hand along your cheek,
will your arms raise to embrace me
in reverence to the sudden light ? or like
a thumb in spongecake, will
my love make just a small impression...

vows have broken over our hearts
like branches on the journey
that has led us to this maze. eight
floors down from this window
there's a spread of grass and flowers

because this poem isn't about skin
that shivers beneath a kiss. we know
all that--damp panties, erections,
kisses, sweat, tears--we will wake
from our trance with wish rings on our fingers
like the knuckles of a gnarled tree.

this poem is about leaves
and loves and loves leaving
and about how love can fail so utterly
that sorrow spreads like clover.
...condemned we kneel before
the altar of each other.

from the open door, leaves
rustle across the balcony
like broom straw. wind-weary sunlight
drops as air spills like rain
over me. words pelt lightly
and dissolve into the screen.

the end was written long ago,
before we turned page one.
perhaps we'll never meet.
but i still recall your laughter,
your voice, and think about
your skin until the silence
becomes a noise and tiptoes away

yesterday.  i unraveled my hopes like a
prayercloth--torn in places, calligraphy
bleeding along the edges, devoid of
answers.

even after all that has gone before, i
wanted to believe that they heard me,
they cared; they were telling the truth...

my hands were hobbled like birds--a fat
bulb in my numb right hand, the call-button
for a nurse who didn't give a shit.

squeeze that button and you'll get a whole
bag of wrath, pillows jammed under your knees
until your legs fall off the sides;

in the book of lost entries, you no longer
exist, where you were is a smudged erasure
in the bottom margin.

across the hall, lights are shutting off
but all you can hear is the clang and clatter
of the MRI machine.

come lay your bones
on the alabaster stones

and if you survive this, know
that they are irritated that you took
up their time with your pain...

yes. you hope for a day with
soft edges of kindness, buoyant
with a decent happiness to release
the heart's shroud...

but that was a former era.

this is the last poem in the book

it's easy to miss the train
of thought.   up here it's just
an occasional lonesome whistle
floating up behind the sound
of cars of old women driving their
drunk men home, driving their
drunk men methodically home
when the wind turns and staggers
up from the south. on the darkened
balcony a wisp of wind
tickles my deaf ear like a whisper-

moonlight has
arrived with its beautiful scatter
of white lies. there are waving fields
of late grain for the yearly sacrifice--the
goddess rises wounded and elderly, a mere shadow of
her former self.

i received a letter from a man i slept with
a long time ago--sure, come, he says,
for two or three days.  it is the White Nights
so when we walk home at midnight
the world is luminous. i could go with this
blonde man to see the inch-long buddha
trapped behind glass at the Viking Museum..

but i won't go. it's too late now.
in the frozen attitude of naive agony
the fawns in the forest of my heart
are all shot down and turned to stone
like statues, standing alone and
motionless in the city of Oslo.

thank you for the unexpected invitation.
i remember you, Christian, the man
with whom i traveled the stelvio pass;
my heart in my mouth--

here in my rustic living room , i memorialize you,
protected by old ghosts
with burrowing voices.
yes, i remember you
with your hollowed skin like a tin mission
and your sexual desires thumping
like swallows in the attic.

i remember you
with a modicum of warmth
and a great deal of bewilderment. i remember
your white-blonde hair, full of light like your skin.
and i remember your empty heart, your eyes
like blue tunnels to a hollow abyss.

i can't believe you kept my address
all this time.  thank you for the invitation.

i won't be coming back

just as remembered rivers
never end, i am the love that
henceforth
you can never really deny,
the lamp in your heart  that
henceforth
you can
never really switch off.

just as
dreams need no doctors,
laughter mimics the collapsing
gleam of dawn
when a dream of love
passes through your echoes

just as
an egret writes on water
and passersby hurry
over the ruins of our hearts,
just as those who taught me breath and meaning
bleed in the shadows of my poetry

just as
the inside of my heart holds a falling star
and what's written on paper is my bones
you will be my lifelong love.
there will always be ways
of explaining life

but no way to quench
this fire