branches like glass
lift their arms to the light.
the sun comes on tiptoe
over the icy threshold.
tongues of frost
are licking the windowpane

you and i,
our union
is as perfect as the earth.
together we have created a thousand miles
of hills and valleys, rivers and plains
which now keep us apart.

but when summer comes,
i will turn my face toward you
like a dew-drenched rose
at sunset on a clearing day
and let the tears dry

in the meantime, i am sending you
this winter poem
if you don't understand the meaning,
it doesn't matter--
you can use your fingers
to touch the screen gently
like a doctor feeling for his patient's pulse.
perhaps you can tell
that they throb
to the rhythm of your heart

you and i,
we are two branches like glass
and from the distance that lies between us
we can measure
how hard the wind blows,
how high the tide rises,
how cold are the ice and snow
how deep is the longing for love

i want to exit this tomb of a room
and walk where the sheep of light
graze on the high meadow of the mountain
a lamp,  a candle, a star here and there
remind me of an old desire
that lurks in the deep well of my heart
a reflection
refusing to vanish
the wind's hooves gallop behind me
faster and more desperate than time
like a ray of light
on a layer of cooled volcanic rock
i remember love

tell me how to kick the memory
of passion's hunger like a stone
into tomorrow's empty stomach
how to pile up all the days
of soured milk
into a crumbling monument
or a tombstone
teach me how to arrange
my poems like ants, transporting food
to eternity--old grains of rice
nourishing the dried gully
of the soul

i miss the ideals of yesterday
that vista of dark waves
looming like crestfallen, resentful years
don't say that tragic idealism is a waterfowl
flying toward the edge of the ages
yet unable to find a tree
on which to perch
allow me to remember love
and the scent of a man
his hair a swath of night
in the starlight;
allow me to remember
a dream in my arms

let me fall down
outside tomorrow's door
i don't want to enter
that zone of barrenness
that arch of despair
i don't want to enter
even if my short-lived dream
is only a grey dove
taking off in the lilac dusk of time
like a pair of startled eyes
only you
may be able to follow
the twists and turns of my soul

did i ever tell you?  once
i stood at the gates of heaven
but i stepped back
and away--

it was not my time to enter.
(not talking about death here,
talking about love
and its hellish consequences.)

i just dreamed those lines.

talking about the queue, the long 
line to heaven, the doorman,
the stamp you get on your hand
so you can get back in,

in case your earthly life is resuscitated--
forget it.  DNR! and if you revive me anyway, i am
not going back to that joyless, misogynistic place.

today it is utterly like spring.  sap is running,
snow has turned to mud, and the media's fancy
has turned once more to prostitution.
Lord, kindly own what you have done.
there is no way, no way
your mother would have let her house
become such a mess

where was i?
i was talking about love and how real love,
love like a pitch black room in which
there is one magic candle;
love where the innocent heart-true lover
is not the one who falls through a great
collage of dying stars;

love, where the past is held aloft, briefly
like leaves; where there are no stagnating promises
and the very first agenda is not to end it
and to leave....

Love.  the only thing in all of life
that is not a state of altered consciousness

some nights are dream-ravaged,
a fold in time, an island floating
on the planet's edge about to fall off
without a trace,

but each day my journey starts
in the green raiment of a brooding hill.
it starts with faith, whistling up the wind
across a deciduous dark, and in my window

there is a summons to unreachable light.
wildflowers tease, then plead to be alone
among the shadows, waiting
for a warmer solstice

and specks of small hopes are sparkles
on a jade sea, bright beings in a dreamful life,
a life in which i am what i seek,
a dream in which even without the sun,

i am sun-blessed

i won't write about the arrival
of the sun, grinning with teeth
that are crimson from savaging the night.
never mind the clouds' conversation,
the snow reflecting pink diamonds,
the black, skeletal thinking
of winter's brittle trees.

it is several years now since i felt
the devastation of love--its passionate light;
its fetal aftermath.  they have
a vividness reserved for dreams;
the tragi-comedy of a shakespeare play.
but neither shall i write more about the seas,
salt, or sun;

no tree crotches, fat hobos;
no Lotharios.
i will keep to a grayscale montage,
moonbeams dangling from a magical sky,
a tired river abandoning its flailing arms
of shallow water to a white tropical sun.
never mind the lingering horde of dreams,
those bright colors of a fable that lingers on--
i renounce them.

i won't write poetry of love

it's hard to write something beautiful
and lasting
in this fugitive time;

our allotted share on earth
with the world in disarray
that poetry can not set right

we no longer meet at the edge of morning
in this room full of the litter of every day,
we pass through
at different times, leave messages
on torn scraps of paper

following a ball
we threw in a park
a long time ago

the dawn does not hold direction
nor light playing in the leaves
nor stars in my western sky

names have been sponged one by one
from the slate of memory

and lately the headlines enter into my heart
like an assassin
my heart is torn, unknown
to itself

as the winter within
freezes my breath

who will listen to the wind
carrying my faint voice
into the years

i want to walk on the soft carpet
of summer nights,

even though i will hear the desolate bark
of little dogs,

i will still remember your laugh

i keep trying to speak
with this voice of rusted machinery.
dawn came cold this morning
stuck to flypaper clouds.
it's finally winter
and the flowers of memory wilt
in the spinning wind
brittle in rows
of damaged magnificence.

where was it, exactly, that
our legend began?  where and when?
was it in hallways that led between mountains?
was it on the edge of the skies of youth?
was it near where the river pirouettes
past the playground i wandered in as a child?

or was it at the very corner of a mountain
where hawks dropped out into space
and wrote our story on the empty blackboard
of the past?

what is love after all, but the language
that gives us wings,
the scenes, poems, and dreams
stored so long in the backrooms

of our hearts' natural imagery

bamboo bends in the wind
kissing the ground like a
lithe-hipped dancer.

maple trees cradle
their shadows where
the path down cold mountain

is overgrown with sumac
and other invasive species.
the moon climbed up the solstice

and is resting now with vishnu
on a cloud. last night's candle
is asleep in its wax tears--

leave-taking at its simplest.
growing up is hard, watching
offspring grow up--also hard.

if there is a guiding light from heaven
i believe it is the moon
in a poem that dreams

of the scurry of a fawn
in a house of ferns
by the river that flows without ceasing

perhaps in the back of the book
of my heart, there is a poem
about the winter solstice
and christmas

a poem about
the angels
with sticky fingers
and a few loose teardrops

perhaps my father and
my mother hover a few feet
below the rustic ceiling
they've been picking blueberries

their fingernails are stained blue
perhaps all the friends i have offended
will feel forgiveness this year
perhaps we'll return to a pure beginning

perhaps with a sense of chaos
my ex-husband will remember
christmas eve is our wedding anniversary
perhaps the spiral of our lives

will pass close,
so close
to the love
we once knew

neither death nor silence ends real love
at any time
any one of the loved ones fallen from the map
may reappear
suddenly pushing the door open
overlapping faces and voices
transcending time   as we know it
maybe with their hands
they will pull me up
from where i sit on the sagging couch
maybe  we will go back to that innocence
maybe sunlight will disclose and spread
its infinite message
maybe they will trust that my love is true
maybe a low chime will ring from the bell
in love's temple, shaking off the lingering snow
of less fortunate times
maybe a choir of angels will flap their soundless wings
in the solemn dusk
waiting for night to break the lonely day
maybe there will be a song soft as moonlight
stroking midnight's dark skin
maybe human shadows will kindle into light
maybe fallen leaves will blow back on the branches

maybe a past moment will become the next moment