spring is slow in coming
but the jacob's ladder
is blooming.   i see it as if
from a sedan chair, my heart
forever longing for a better past...

a sudden shower and the rain
comes down like a plague
of locusts, the clouds over my head
are amassed like wild beasts

and you are somewhere afar,
casting shadows, doing whatever you do
until we meet again in this heaven
of our own making, scarred

and moon-shod.  we won't retreat
into a poemless night. we'll come down
from the clouds to hear the ghosts
in the wind, the geese in the grass...

they say the roots of poetry
grow stronger in the soil of sorrow;
then dwindle in the chapped power of time.
but we are not yet ready to fade away
from these echoing rooms, these closets
of hidden cries...

i watch a figure and his shadow
mowing the grass
around gravestones, tending, tending,
always tending the silent trembling inside--

tuning the stars, jarring the dark alive