winter winds blow in from the eastern mountains
thousands of trees are sparse and bare,
covered with white.
windows are decorated
with lacy garlands of snow.   like silken threads
the moonlight glimmers on the quilt;
written on silk are your letters
that you send to me in dreams.

since yesterday, the pines
have been heavy with snow.
"dark fragrance, sparse shadows",
west of the balcony railing
a thousand trees blossom with snow
like flowering plums.
your hair like snow;
midnight snow like blossoms--
in my ageless dream,
it's hard to know the difference.

the white sky
is throwing snow, thick and heavy.
one day of clearing,
one week of clouds;
in the snow, sparrows leave prints
then fly away.
if they hadn't left so hurriedly, i would ask them
" beyond this sky, is there another sky?"

this night of wind and snow
is my love poem.
come and embrace my melting, springtime look.
i love you ( there is no phrase to substitute.)
please take care of my worried insecurity
( it's an intimate gesture to hand it over to you)

i'll carry you into my home
on a ragged poem.
i'll carry you into my home
on the back of the neighbor's barking dog.
i'll carry you into my home on your sudden guilt
and my fiercely tender grief.

you are my migratory bird on the wing
coming from a dream
to nest in the snowy north.   you carry
moonlight, pouring a deep stream
into the moist look in my eyes.
we are a conflagration of candle flames
standing in the solitary night,
the quest of moths by the riverbank
where the wild goose spreads its wings--
our hearts are its skyward flight.

dawn will come running through the snow,
shaking the windows with it's loud light.
snow, like white doves, will perch on each branch
of the pines.  it is there that that the sun will strike
our loneliness down, the clouds will part
and mutter dark echoes.
our love will float among trembling flakes of snow.
on the bosom of the sky
will be thousands of roses,
a fragrance evoking a whole world of love
a sky beyond the sky.
your footprints across this great divide
of time and distance
will fade in melting snow.
i will walk
out of a pale half-seashell
and sing in the moonlight.
the sky will warm
and the last stars of winter
will glitter like fireflies
poking holes in the cold curtain of night,
then fade to dawn.
the sun, like a juicy orange
will drop into the abyss of your heart,
where rings of dew will shatter.

my silk quilt will keep out the cold,
your dreams and mine will take one shape.
midnight, two o'clock, four in the morning--
finally together, too overcome to sleep
we'll hold each other close
and listen to the wind, listen to icicles drip,

listen to the beatific sighing of the pines

would you, on the year's longest nights,
count and recount mistakes
like a celebrity's indiscretions--your own
or someone else's?   would you think
that the twinge of love that followed
your thoughts was nothing but the shred
of a no-longer-valid persona?

as it turns out, nothing is that simple when
things are deep.  but the mind can
think eventually that it has vanquished the heart--
although eventually, the body will tell it otherwise.
now it is truly winter, the season of the only true promises.

the expansive cruelty of flowers is gone.
it's an adventure to walk this trail, novel in its own way,
irregular and assessing me in the past imperfect,
no longer an event specific to itself.

there must be something about the work in progress
that will redeem me this time, me, this classical figure
struggling halfway up a mountain.  only i , out of the two of us,
can still be foolish enough to search the vanishing snow
beneath my feet for our footprints

as if the wind could choose
what to preserve,
what to blow away

four degrees.

so far, so good,

not.

winter, if you ever end,
spring will wake up
wearing green pajamas

wake up from night
in that black skirt
that forever defies folding.

i admit i find it frustrating
that the plowman never once
considers the purpose of the exercise.

i still can’t get the car out.

but never mind that–once it was
the sort of thing i found irrelevant.
it was the root and fruit
holding a thousand years
in one core
and the fall of another star
into a shell
holding the roar of the sea
that had meaning.

but that was before i became
this bell already rung
with fallen dust inside my heart
and thoughts of home beyond a thousand sails–

my left shoe print : only afternoon,
my right shoe print : already evening.

i should stick to clouds
as a topic of poetry.
clouds in a greenless wind
from carved curves
toward sky beyond sky
and the moon slanting toward the west

as it speeds across the river

please don't love me for
my metaphors
only take away my images
and love the naked splendor
of my skin.
my pretty verses are only
drops of spray on a sea
of words, but please remember
they were once stars inlaid
on the skies of my heart.

my heart is an orphan boat
crossing a steady image of an ocean
where countless mountains
have sunk into the sea.
the Word of Heaven
is neither written nor read,
and the self-sufficient
universe only lives between the lines,
a naked rose of light, unadorned

it is the love
within the words that lives on--
tear stained sleeves
and hearts full of longing
perfume of flowers
or a harp melody
holding back the billowing flood
of the world... poems
are only signposts for the heart
on the bridge of time,
where the river and evening clouds
stretch away for a thousand miles

start with a blank sheet of paper,
virtual or otherwise.  it’s the paper
that writes the poem, the mind
abhors a vacuum–my boyfriend
used to say that.

you might find yourself writing
a memory or a memory of a memory
that remembered itself to you from another.
perhaps it was self-deprecating, or innocent,
or feigning innocence.

it is not always comfortable, but
there’s this blank sheet of paper,
virtual or otherwise, and a kind of
vague idea of what you want it to say
and the first memory in turn forgets itself

so that in the end you are not sure
what you really remember or what
you have forgotten.  still, there is an image
of water weeds trapping dragonflies
like liquid glass,

even as you drive away there is a
lone figure dressed in white.  she
is bending over the ground, looking
at something lost in the glare from the sun
against the peach colored sky

fading into irrelevance,
part of a fable people only tell
to remember themselves.
her eyes told other stories, ones
no one wanted to know

and somewhere on the page,
the blank sheet of paper, virtual or otherwise,
the wind wraps itself around
a stucco chimney

swirling the smoke skyward

along the southern skyline
snow is falling like hansel and gretel’s crumbs
or grains of rice, flung out
on neither trail nor time

i parked the car just in time
to avoid my own destination
wearing wind and twilight
my snowdrop necklace touching my frozen palm

even the balcony columns look like
frozen, withered skulls.
this too shall pass, although
not unmarked by the whiteness of the air

there is nowhere
to go in this blizzard
but inward. even the knot of my shadow
wears snow-pins in her hair

while two teabags in the teapot
huddle for strength and warmth
and snowflakes jewel the windowsill.
take my hand and look–

you can see it snowing in my eyes

. . . . As the bird trims her to the gale, 

okay. i lied about the moon and the
walls burnished silver.  snow lies
on this mountain like a plague,
the silver moon now a hazy smear
struggling to find its terminus.

and your movements--the ones that
made me lose my place in the
earthly air? those occurred a thousand
miles away inside of someone else.

in truth, if truth is true, my room is white
like reflected snow,
and it is the sound of your virtual voice--
sometimes resigned to life's vicissitudes
and sometimes charmed and holy
like waves of wind
in the trees--
that i fell for, long ago.

we have never touched.

but what
are the objects
that seduce me?

words

every day before the world falls apart,
before the flood of thought begins,
before the last star leaves the morning twilight,

the moon turns back to the pond
for one last look at herself in the mirror,
an adamantine queen on a throne of silver

where half of every tree is shadow.

in the stillness of a frozen star you say
my name three times, the third time softly;

the floor, the walls, the ceiling
all silver-plated now,
as your deliberate movements

rip my breath to rags

• 

  i will sing to you.  pieces of music
  that never existed.  a falling stone.
  a cracked bell. feathers catching a wind.

  there will be a parade to celebrate.
  the frayed edges.
  the dead marching in half syllables.

  drumbeats will tear the bright world to shreds.
  swallows dropping from the eaves like plums.
  leaves falling wet with worry for the last time.

  i will search for you. a dark shadow
  within a shadow. miles of air around you.
  trees waving their uncertain arms.

  the package of my body.
  tapping an erratic rhythm.
  a tender shell meant to open.

  we are both half blind. you and i.
  birds vanishing behind the hills.
  the curve of a breast that invented breathing.

  the white wind thrashes a tree's silhouette.
  snow tumbles down.  a dead weight.
  no music.
  no parade.
  no drums.
  no shadows.
  no shell.
  no breast.
  no birds.

  no sound.
  static wingbeats broken in mid-flight.

last night, midnight lowered its black weight
upon the earth
with the moon as its only witness.
i knew a dream was coming--a once-husband's
visit was the harbinger. he, like you, is wedded
forever to my fate, following me this way and that
like a reeling, drunken shadow,
'though i, myself, am stone cold sober.

the moon regretted all her unfinished poems,
she cried naked into the snow-covered forest
then faded away, frozen.
but tonight she'll be back
to blind my compassionate heart.
meanwhile,
this blog is an orphanage in which
i am a star.  in this small eternity
i have unlearned

how to keep on waiting
for the love of all loves.
he came, he went--
multiple times.

perhaps the dead will reawaken;
perhaps heaven will text
my smart phone--
just one "LOL" would suffice
for a thousand years of happiness.
just to know:

that it will all turn out right