i've been footloose in a world that can break
a person's heart. you could say i have had my head
in the clouds, but sometimes i've
had sand in my craw. i spurned all advice
that cautioned against the time
love would swallow me,
then forget me.
(they had never known
what it was like to love someone
as if nothing would ever again
be worthy.)
nine years ago,
i found my fortune teller
in chinatown.
he said, "speak to the gods
in metaphorical language--an autumn sky
going down in flames, a face
eclipsed by time and distance,
shadows in the dusk,
eyes filled with lost years.
he never said a word about
work or money, death , life, or love.
he never mentioned the windmill
turning in my heart.
before i could even blink, he ushered me
down the steps to a street awash
in red firecracker paper.
and ever since that day
i haven't been able to speak.

my heart is in my mouth.

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

winter is pretending to be over.  idle wishes
manifest, the frogs are mating in the pond
you can hear them singing.
lilacs are budded out, snowdrops
blooming in the hard-packed leaves
left by the snow plow.

lichens are claiming the balcony.
i have come back to myself, now
that the rags of march have unraveled
and blown away like the prayer flags
at the base camp of mount everest.
the locust tree shakes against the wind,

trying to hurry its buds. if you were here--
any one of you-- i would hold you in my arms
until storm winds snuffed out the flames.
i could never figure out why you--or you--or you
ever even bothered with me, surrounded
as you were by beautiful women

nevertheless, days i loved you, whoever you were.
nights i dreamed of going away,
far away from the need i knew you'd discard
far away from the brutal endings

i always knew would come

a sun, aimlessly setting,
you quietly sitting behind the supermarket--
a buddha of the evening.

gazing toward the west,
the mystery of your face
unreadable and timeless as stone

though walls and darkness
surround your unsubmissive spirit
by this small corner a light shines

dimly obscure, intangibly thin
slipping through the heart's longings

the bright moon of your spirit never dims

perhaps the day will come
when we will leave the creek,
and round bales will sit
only in the meadows
of memory,
like the hushed sound
when a circular saw,
cutting through plywood
stops,
and sawdust
is drifting in sunbeamed air.

perhaps we can fold
the four corners of a moment
into the center;
open it
in nights to come
to catch the scent
of grass and clover
in the dark

make a petal fold, a valley fold,
a series of mountains fold,
fold an imaginary embrace
in such a way
that it becomes
something that really happened
in memory

things past,
we can be forever sure of.
the moon shining
on a meandering creek
like molten silver on black silk.
a red bird like a bow
on a package, leaving wounds and feathers
on a window.  leaves dropping
in silence after the first frost
of october....

we can only be unsure
of what will happen next.  the slant
of light as the sun declines
is a knife, separating the creek
and us
from old age
and abandonment

flying over a thousand miles
of mountains and meadows,
a wild duck dips its shadow
toward the lake and hope
circles out from its sun-tipped wings.

let us also circle out
from a boat where we
are distressed by time
and the journey's wounds.
circling above dark hair
and unhappy yesterdays,
a morning star

enters into the water of your
deep eyes and all the windows
of your heart open up like rivers.

the touched heart needs more, though--
you cannot spell out the words
of love only by waiting. the stripes
of light escaping are songs you once
sang only for yourself--but  let them escape
into the widening view

and footsteps sink in the memory
of tomorrow.  was it only yesterday
that we were so young that we
only worshiped the passionflowers
of our hearts? now   days fall in a row
of faraway drums, and we submerge
our hands in the graceful rhythm of words.

i wonder if one day, when images have
no mutation of seasons or distance of hearts,
we, after being separated by the Great Divide
of Heaven , will drink to each other
and talk about this poem

even after the green ferns have grown
over us and covered us up,
eternity has approached without a sound

and the wind has taken off its shadow

remember how water held part
of the evening sun?
where was it we went that day?
the moon was rising, ringed in rose--
i would have stayed with you forever
if you hadn't turned away

where the paths were chalky pebbles
set with stepping stones--
but you stopped suddenly
among the settling leaves,
standing hushed, reverent
beneath the curtains of the coming night

then resolutely walked away
without looking back
utterly unaware of the shadows
falling on your life...
a knight walking away from the holy grail

now you resemble a husk of armor
with gray bones of memory inside
you have forgotten me and everything
forgotten what you told me

that day when all our fires
went out for the last time.

now the slightest wind
could blow me to pieces
blow me into a scrap of a smile,
a shred of a has-been girl,
a remnant of a knight's ribbon
held by water,

like part of the evening sun

last night the ash and maple fought
for the moon in my backyard.
now a vulture hangs above the east window
as the unspent days are folded
and put away
like a leaf pressed in a book.

there is a golden decade
when the body's needs are few
and the mind's are insatiable.
that time is past now, the mind
is sluggish and the body
clamors for .. relief.
how i wish that the flowers of spring
would open to the miracle
of a non-event, the truth of an ordinary day.

where is my home now
since i have lost the threshold of your hand?
love is the only word there is
and a fool's tongue wears out
trying to learn to say it,
although the meaning has been there
every day of my life

last night, as soft twilight
pressed down on me, i heard
the sad horn of the setting sun.
it wiped the days’ bronze mouth
and entered memory’s dark cave

where my face was woven like a
bamboo basket.   doused
in the shadow of your absence
winter and spring take turns
breaking my bones…

each night is like a ring with
pain squeezed within its circle
and love is a mirror, broken.
i wanted to write a poem of love and light.
i wanted to write a beautiful dream, i really did.

but life is always giving dreams a bad name.

we have moved on from the equinox.
light crowds against the window
well into the hour of twilight.
darkness is reserved for dreams, falling in
a slow sparkle in midnight's halcyon hush
of mild ripples on a haunted ocean.

sometimes solitude is gratifying
in its loneliness, allowing time for noticing
the presence of life separate from myself,
the edges of the clouds etched in a vivid
sharpness, the sky color-washed blue
right down to the stark edge of distance.

spring is a land of sunlit green or
gray rain where dreams meet the shore
of resigned and self-contained exile.  the wind
shakes the leaves by their shrubby shoulders,
stirring me to longing.  once upon a time
i loved you in a dying gray-green light

that outgrew the dream
from which it was born