A Signal for Respite

“Despite appearances,” she said
“I bruise deeply and easily.”

Please reserve your blows
For another day,
When she is whole and strong
And remembers how to use words.

But today, let her mourn
The involuntary passing
of her former, gentler self
Into the annals of virtue.

The Judgement of the Withered-Branch Peony Tree

The withered branch,
Come spring, was bare.

Though unfamiliar with this tree
We knew the Truth and it decreed
The dried-up womb be severed
And burned.

Humble servants, we obeyed.
We axed the gnarled limb and gave
It to the ready flames and watched
It burn, easily, proof we were right.

We succeeded. We made room
For boughs that know when they ought to bloom.

How sad, how sad,
For had we waited
We would have seen
Come darkest winter,
When we’re starving for color
And a cause for hope,

Blossoms,
On the branch
We, in our wisdom, exterminated.

Home

You are my primary cause
A hot, bright thing to make me leap and gleam.

I am sorry
I have seen the suspended egg,
full of sticky life yolk
and straining to hold fast for us.

I cannot un-sense it,
Because the sight tore something,
And created a new color impossible to forget.

Some mornings I cry because
It cannot love me as you do,
It is a chasing after the wind.

"Meaningless! Meaningless!"
says the Teacher
"Utterly meaningless!
Everything is meaningless."

But a stain is a stain,
And something was torn, I tell you,
And bled a new color onto my brain.

The color of not-but-almost-sorrow.

Dust to dust, it is a comfort,
I will go, sweet and soundless.

But while here, I must attend
To the silver cord, the golden bowl,
The pitcher, the wheel,
The dust, and the spirit.

But always,
You will be my primary cause
The hot, bright thing that makes me leap and gleam.

A Napkin Found Under the Diner Table

I found his paper napkin
Only half-wet from mayonnaise

"Lights out. Pronto. Mangoes 8/20."

Do you love him
Very much?

With his choice words
And penmanship so fine
And a taste for mayonnaise
I wish he were mine.

Untitled

Weathered old man, I study his type:
The Automaton.

Creaking and clicking into his seat within the chanting Mass.
But no – his soul decries his context.

Don’t waste your sympathetic smiles;
What need has he for your instruction, Voltaire?
What unfamiliar lesson could you teach him, Diderot?
Gaia is teacher and muse.
What you have detailed in sundry volumes of high and mighty word,
He inauspiciously gives living form, under her discerning eye.

At your invitation to the perfumed salon, a polite declination:
“No, thank you, I ought to get back. Horses ha’int been fed.”

He sees his smallness, taught him by a life wrestling the earth.
He knows his fallibility, taught him by solitary, dawn-lit walks home after weary nights spent by the side of a dying calf.
He understands life, its instrumental purpose, taught him by solemn slaughterings and his own broken body.

He sees his smallness; I see a crown of humility.
He knows his fallibility, and so keeps his sword of judgment sheathed.
He understands the instrumental purpose of life, and so mocks the approaching dragon,
Death.

He touches my arm and tells me my skin is beautiful and brown like my mother’s
And that my heart knows best,
And I remember blackberries so ripe they could be gathered with concentrated breath;
I remember the tulips, my compass, every spring returning to spell out our heritage;
I remember racing -- downy legs on hot horseflesh -- through tobacco fields toward the place where copper clouds meet Kentucky bluegrass;
I remember the land, something so secure – something that will outlast us both,
Enduring despite our limitations, our forgetfulness.
Line by line, I see the impression of his soil-stained hands on my heart.
I see us on different sides of the semantic chasm, bridge-building, plank by tender plank.
As we cry together, understanding the misunderstood.

Tardiness

I waited for you
In the azaleas
That one spring.

The air began to sigh and pace.
I decided to begin --
How to know?

I have finished the lemonade now
And the cherries are almost gone too.
I'm afraid only the pits are left.

You have missed
All the sweet things.

(How could you?)

Untitled

My dear manic shape-shifter
My coy coyote, dancing for pennies
Performing, always,
With a flourish, you turn your face dark
Your curl up into yourself
And turn 'round the mirrors
And I have lost your real eyes now.
They are all so lovely:
Some morose, sucking on a cig.
Some clownish, aching for the break of laughter.
Or angry and bewildered, a boy-child raised by wolves, alarmed by hush nows and cluck clucks.
Some absent, raking over the brick-a-brack that so bores you, calling for heads to roll for distraction's sake.

Slow down so that I can see the wound
And balm and wrap it.