did you think that when they magnetize
my molecules, i would forget you? it's not
going to happen, not even when the
incomplete moon kneads me into
shadows on the MRI
and fog rises from the interior of my brain.

magnetic resonance turns bodies into maps
that retrieve lost loved ones. did you know that?
rivers, mountains, time zones are no obstacle...

inside my head when the magnets clank
a moth will flutter its striped wings.
i'll listen to your voice through memory's keyhole,
everything under control like canned sardines.

besides.no matter how my eyes may see things,
their outcome does not depend on my emotions.
no reason to blame the weather
for whatever is in my head...

this is life--forever on the point of no return,
forever in a process of losing our treasures.
yet in our magnetic resonance,
you and i are images

caught in the light

1. an acoustic neuroma is not musical equipment
2. my fortune cookie had two fortunes--
3. the first said When in doubt, just take the next
small step.
4.  the second said When the moment comes, take
the first one from the right.
5.  the moon is a door opening on dreams
6.  twilight is thrashing some loitering shadows
7.  today's news is like congealed grease on a plate
8. every morning i tidy up the room as if meticulously rearranging
the landscape after death
9.  i was born naked into my dying day
10. we stand in deep shadow at the beginning and end of time
11. you need a good heart and a strong stomach to enter my umwelt
12. in summer, poplars applaud each breeze
13. an old tree, having missed the season of blossoms, enters dusk
at the horizon
14. we are fated to be together like canned sardines,
bone against bone
until our dying day
15. but never meet
16.words short into silence
17.my heart feels heavy as if witnessing a wedding
unable to consider its own ending
18. i have loved well
19. i have no regret
20. i have a beautiful smile even though it's splintered into a thousand pieces

the studious wind
is leafing through the pages
of my life, and here you are,
sitting right here in the fourth chapter

as clouds and distant mountains
interface with the yellow edge of autumn
and your unassuming shadow slips
among reflections of the shedding trees

time is a picket fence
that only the wind, sheared by
withered branches, can get through
but deep inside, your image is incandescent

love that is consummated
only in a poem is a concubine of truth--
thus the bitter water of the briny sea
sometimes irrigates my heart

but my hopes always revive
in the rains of your affection
salvaging the wreckage

of my sunken dreams

There were times when
the butterflies of fancy
fluttered toward affection
in a delicate hour of sacrament.

I loved you like a prayer.

now time appears suspended
above the late-summer brooding of an outcast oak
dreaming of acceptance never persuaded,
grown, or conjured.

the atmosphere is disturbed
by mortality's fatal dynamics,
the quest of the flesh for lust and rot;
love to cruel dubieties and unforeseen--or seen and denied--
distress.

i wish i could close up all those seasons
and territories behind me
and step forever into dreams
without politics or saints,
without lovers and leavers,
without regret, desire,
and the folly of anger...

...but i am rambling.

It is morning.

the sky is overcast, the trees
show an oracle of yellow
behind the fading green
and the autumn heat is still strangely summery.
roses capitulate to purple asters,
lilies to drooping white phlox,
riddles to philosophers,
and poets to memories of lost love

that early morning music--
is it birds or ghosts?
birds have hard eyes;
ghosts' eyes have the softness
of melancholy and compassion
as the setting moon is halved
by the horizon.

the house is trembling under
hammer and saw--
are they wielded by an ex-husband
or my father's ghost?
ex-husbands have critical eyes;
my father's eyes have the softness
of love and acceptance.

the windows rattle in turn,
the doors open and close.
is it me or a ghost
going in and out?
the bright blue sky
spreads out in the window--
is it ocean or ashes?
and that thin torn silk--
cirrus clouds or smoke?
wedding dress or coffin lining?

the house is like an old ghost. and because
the wind blows fresh vitality
into its senescent, flimsy frame,
no one would be surprised
if it fell down tomorrow.

that trembling with joints noisily creaking--
is it the house or me?
quietly waving to the wind,
we'll fall down together
and welcome our mutual extinction

last night
when a shadow bent down
from the clouds above the balcony
and stole a diaphanous layer of moonlight
hovering just above the surface

time was silenced.
i thought it was you.
the summer sun is wilting all the flowers
the trees are eloquently mute
the mosquitoes harder to evade
than you could ever imagine

there is no need for such merciless humidity,
any more than there is a need
for joy or sorrow
or to die for a philosophy
before dreams are done
dreams that are longer than life

this poem is for everything
i have forgotten, lovers
i have never loved,
thoughts i have never dared
to think
in a short life spent looking
for the last snowfall
the first breath of spring

time and gravity are the only
enemies, a counterclockwise reality
that takes us to a final incomplete completion.
nebulous clouds like a shadow-lover
surge and sail on
the universe revolves in greatness
just outside the window

a leaf grows, turns green, then yellow;
then falls,
making the windchime sing