The lost Lenore

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,

Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—

    While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,

As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door

            Only this and nothing more.”

    Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December;

And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.

    Eagerly I wished the morrow;—vainly I had sought to borrow

    From my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Lenore—

For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore—

            Nameless here for evermore.

    And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain

Thrilled me—filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;

    So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating

    “’Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door

Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door;—

            This it is and nothing more.”

    Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,

“Sir,” said I, “or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;

    But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,

    And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,

That I scarce was sure I heard you”—here I opened wide the door;—

            Darkness there and nothing more.

    Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,

Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;

    But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,

    And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, “Lenore?”

This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, “Lenore!”—

            Merely this and nothing more.

    Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,

Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.

    “Surely,” said I, “surely that is something at my window lattice;

      Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore—

Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore;—

            ’Tis the wind and nothing more!”

    Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,

In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore;

    Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;

    But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door—

Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door—

            Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,

By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,

“Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,” I said, “art sure no craven,

Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore—

Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!”

            Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

    Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,

Though its answer little meaning—little relevancy bore;

    For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being

    Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door—

Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,

            With such name as “Nevermore.”

    But the Raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only

That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.

    Nothing farther then he uttered—not a feather then he fluttered—

    Till I scarcely more than muttered “Other friends have flown before—

On the morrow he will leave me, as my Hopes have flown before.”

            Then the bird said “Nevermore.”

    Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,

“Doubtless,” said I, “what it utters is its only stock and store

    Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster

    Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore—

Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore

            Of ‘Never—nevermore’.”

    But the Raven still beguiling all my fancy into smiling,

Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust and door;

    Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking

    Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore—

What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore

            Meant in croaking “Nevermore.”

    This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing

To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom’s core;

    This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining

    On the cushion’s velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o’er,

But whose velvet-violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o’er,

            She shall press, ah, nevermore!

    Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer

Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.

    “Wretch,” I cried, “thy God hath lent thee—by these angels he hath sent thee

    Respite—respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore;

Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!”

            Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

    “Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil!—

Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,

    Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted—

    On this home by Horror haunted—tell me truly, I implore—

Is there—is there balm in Gilead?—tell me—tell me, I implore!”

            Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

    “Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil!

By that Heaven that bends above us—by that God we both adore—

    Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,

    It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore—

Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore.”

            Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

    “Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!” I shrieked, upstarting—

“Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore!

    Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!

    Leave my loneliness unbroken!—quit the bust above my door!

Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!”

            Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

    And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting

On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;

    And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming,

    And the lamp-light o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;

And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor

            Shall be lifted—nevermore!

As I went out one morning (with a nod to W. H. Auden)

As I went out one morning 
Walking the primal road
My shoulders were bent over
With an invisible load.

And down by the creek where the salmon
Sing all day in the spring
I heard a man with holes in his clothes
Say, “Love has no ending.”

I wondered at his heresy
He wasn’t supposed to speak
Of things he did not understand
And shouldn’t even seek. 

“I love you, Lord, I love you,”
the ragged man proclaimed,
although his face was badly scarred
and his body bent and maimed.

The man was clearly crazy
For as he spoke his rhyme,
The salmon danced in the shallow stream
In fish-determined time.

I didn’t try to love him
But I loved him just the same
For he broke the diver’s quivering bow
And called his God by name.

“Oh tell me, man, oh tell me,”
I cried in my anguished state,
“What is the secret of the world?
Where is the end of hate?” 

And all at once his face had changed
To an evil, ugly mask
His body had become the hate
About which I had asked.

“How stamp this mask into the mud,
How keep despair at bay?”
“You can’t,” he told me, grinning,
"But my God can point the way.”

“How dare you speak of God, you wretch,
When God’s abandoned you?
How dare you use the Holy Name?
He doesn’t want you to!

Your life’s just spent surviving
With the sidewalk as your bed
And taking poisons in your veins
And scrambling to be fed.”

The man just stood in leaves and mulch
While the salmon sang and spawned:
“Just see the other side of me
And tell me I am wrong.”

Another face appeared just then
A face all beaming bright
Its eyes were streaming like the sun
With pure mysterious light:

“You blinded fool, you stand before
A drop of mist made rain
An eye that Paradise looks through
That holds both joy and pain.” 

“I cannot understand you, for
You play such games with me!
How can you masquerade as God
And tell me how to see?”

“No one knows how Life began,
From Nothing came our birth.
A stir of seething molecules
Sparked all the life on earth.”

“Don’t tell me, wretch, you are the one
Who made this world come true!
Imposter, get out of my road,
I cannot look at you.”

“Just so,” the man said, streaming light,
“For no one knows the why.
But you will be forever changed
By looking through my eye.”

Nonsongs and Neopsalms: a compendium of poems by Margaret Gunning, (Part two)

Part two of an excerpt from a much longer book-length manuscript of poetry (Nonsongs and Neopsalms) that never saw the light of day, though some of the poems were excerpted and published in various literary magazines. These were written over a long stretch of time and represent multiple mental and spiritual transfigurations.

                                       

Delivery

This is a strange

Horse I ride, feet

Pointing up, all bloodless and blue

On a long trail of ether.

My brain swims in a vault of chrome

through the removed murmur of voices

and a distant

Clinical clanking.

I will emerge now, slick and

purple as a baby.  The surgeon’s eyes

Crinkle over the mask.

Hands cool as paper, hands that have never

Handled a snake, patiently suture

All of my holes.  The work is true.

Emergency waiting room

Which is worse:  the spilled

smell of

accidents

or the sound

of magazines

slowly

growing older

in this

ticking house of death?

  

Sorry

My heart unclasped

One day in your office,

Suddenly, all in a shot, the catch

Broke loose, andit

Fell behind a pile of files.

I did not mean to;

It was an accident of gravity.

Earth reached up and pulled it down.

I stood dizzy,

My centre lost, the core

Riven.  It felt silly

to lean over like that.

My face grew hot.

There was no way to put it back.

The space had grown over already;

The fall had changed me.

I left that place different,

Looked outside.  The light

Hurt my skin.  The world

was a new color.

I wiped my eyes, and kept on walking.

A small place

in my chest

Grew still with singing.

loom (a hymn of gratitude)

God sings

As she works.  My, my.  A merry

tune:  Bach; birds.

This weaving

of flesh fibres, new nerves

stretched across dead pain, Awakens

the ache of joy.

How it tingles!  Deft hands move,

A shuttle.  Darting threads,

A gleam.  A sense of fabric.

Substance where there were holes.

The moths driven out.

I will hold now.  No secrets will

Spill through.  The bag is

Solid; it nests

All the marbles.

  Somedays

Somedays, the harshness of nostrils

Bus-lurching crowds, rudespeak

of news-seekers, is too much for me,

I need to nestle, to throstle,

wrestle with the renewal

(of your mint-melting

inner adagio)

The bus vomits; I catch hold of things

again.  Taking charge of the crowd,

grabbing thumbs

manipulating the traffic

pulling the world with a pair of

pliers

It’s no good any more:  I need your dependable

light somnolence:  the old silk robe

of your being

(I need to

wear you

like

hair)

 Crown (For Joshua)

It’s purple out today; no mistaking

it.  Purple sings

The imperial air.  Where

roses were lost, that dimension

They were sucked into/I traverse

(as through a secret panel

or revolving door)

to the Other Side, where essence of roses

Smells.

Purple wings shot through

with veins – with skeins of slaughter

We know the price:  the smell of

(blood and roses)

Purple sings the imperial air.  Where

roses are hidden/purple roses

that spill

 You-riff (a favorite)

If mint ice cream could be made flesh,

(moreover

                Gershwin’s

                                   (innocent

piano keys (not the    (inanimate:  but the

        (hot

very (act of playing) teeth, a fine Mary-

morning

(could be a bald spot:a hunch of shoulders)

                                                                 (all

then I guess this Everywhere where we  (call

the universe/this minimouse, into the Here

would be exhaling you/expressing you

daily,

in daily bliss, dally, bless blush 

       

              doily

in gaily, /  earthshivering

Maymess triumphant, in Gerard Manley Hopkins’

hosiery/then, I guess your

Bashful tigersmile’s a paean to

“Great Chocolate!” eyes  (a-bleeding

                                         (monument to

(hooting hyaena’s

                            laugh’s a plainsong to)

  Lean into it

Haven’t they played this song before?

It’s pain, and it has been on my radio

For weeks now.  Let’s settle down

(my yoyo:  the tiny precious blue one,

has been asleep for days; some dream

told me it had died,

             (spring died,

That it   (would not be back again.)

“But an astral yoyo”  (this is

an official statement) broke loose

between our tromboning eyebeams,

our Sprung-together selves.  You are

an Arctic expedition; I a mere

can of Spam, better than eating the dogs

but less tasty than your bunkmate

           Everything stopped breathing

There was a gown

Made of apricots,

Woven from

A dream of bees, a smile

so drunken it was breathed by

Mother Teresa; I was saturated.

Then you came along like an

Old saddle, your walk as

wobbly as

Copland’s cowboy.

Was I expected to just

                                                           (go on)

breathing again?

  Mary Alice

I sing of Maryalice,

nun as sweet as she

(tied up in the AA meeting/back to back

with Ray the pervert, the man

with the gun in his pocket

Fisheye Red, Lazy Sprockett, and the kindly forever prostitute)

A dizzy harrumph, and Mary Alice spoke

of life/in an abstinent/dry convent

Not even the sacrificial

Wine/A sober nun!  I longed

to anoint

her

/        screwed brow

with the oil of self-congratulation the raw

Bursting sanctity of very existence.

Her voice was frail as a Gramophone,

her hug like rails,

her print dress (out of habit?) disdainfully

Particolored.  I wanted an umbrella

to shield her bent crown

from the raining destruction of reality

  

  Buzzed

Your hive was a hum of

Cortical surprise; a splendor

                                (golden fuzz)

Of psalms:  a salty                        of Bee

being.  Such passion

in the apiary!  Such dizzy repro- (se-?)

Duction!  Bee

attitudes frighten me.  I will pick

the salacious hairs, the

haloed laughter of swarms

From my bee-blurred eyes.

                                                

Three-part invention

(a) indigo eyes

I am the salt

you are the sweet

hair/

        My heartsprung

(horse) of the air,

au clair

ah! care,

         clover

to the/stables,

We.

     Drenched with the scent

of hens of hay

                    dear

of tree:  your/odor

(of salt

(of sap

(of sea

b) cunningerotic

Lip, let me laugh

You.  Set the salt

Sally, sashay down

The hay of my mind.

Seashorn,

feverworn

hairborne:  Your

face a chiming, a

Brining.  The

(stainglassed

seahorse

of your

                                          (voicy

                                      (ice

c)     Fifth chakra (for ray lynch)

a blues tunnel

blamed open

pitched down

to the base of the soul

Mermaids spinning

in your throat, Dear

heart:  shining vessel,

opened for a song,

shut open,

Wept for a penny

disabled

    the

by/(dreaming

      (door

  

Three more haiku

I.     Back road

                                             

The way unspools, retreating

           from a back window:

           Unreeling

           vision.

II.               Spiral

               Higher I mount, and higher.

               I look down.  The screw

               Turns deeper.

               I climb.

 III.           Final exam

              Horses explode from the gate.

              Pens surging forward –

              Furious

              focus.

                            

Nonsongs and Neopsalms: a compendium of poems by Margaret Gunning (Part 1)

Herein, some poems I wrote during various times in my life, pretty much as they went down, unedited. A few of them even got published in the likes of Prism International and Room of One's Own, but my book-length manuscript (Nonsongs and Neopsalms) didn't fly because my style was all over the map. As are these, but I'd still like to share them. For the sake of flow, I won't break these up with my customary images. This ran so long I had to divide it in two parts.

What Happens in September

all the acorns of my brain rioting

           out of a little hole in the top of a tree

I can hear them rumbling

(like Frost’s apples) from long away –

Squirrels whiz in a double helix

         around the black tree/each

                                  tail-frisk

bright as a fizzing synapse

The smell of English walnuts

       and an old old box made of dusky wood

                just opened after fifty years in

                                                         the attic

Chestnuts on the ground like the

eyes of fractious horses

that gallop through

                   a seethe of

                                surf

I am six, scuffy-kneed, collecting

chestnuts to string or sell on the street

or Sixty, dimmed but simmering still,

hair gone to milkweed,

skin with the smell of dried apricots

and used aprons/still on the

wheel of Four, the wheeling and

reeling,

rocketing year.

Bite the plum

Naked is as naked

does:  as clear as

Your eyes are,

your clothing is

that much

       /clearer,

dearer still the scent

             all man,

of you,/inestimable.

I should never

Take you out of that box,

Never sample those

 dark

/chocolates,

      too

for / dear you are,

the Arabian horse

of my childhood

(standing still only to be

petted).

Notice me!  I am more

than a

Brain on a stick, but

an  (all-breathing

       (Non-fiction       /woman.   To break

this cellophane

  (that heatshrinks your

legend),

would it be a rupture,

an insertion, an

arrogance of the ovaries,

Or a sweet inevitable,

        angel driven  (deep)

my  /                                 into

the moist cake of your heart

   

              as
You are  /  removed as

an engraving of a dybbuk,

I can stroke your image

only,  Never get your

smell/or feel your hair

Never grab it –

                 up  in

Let it dry/to a soft

Black wrinkled fruit –

The juice that never

had a chance to

run down my

                          chin

will gleam in those

glacial blue

eyes:

Will spark on your

skin –

Spring-loaded

April’s where I live,

         the place my heart opens

                   rose-burgeoning, shinyleaf-new

a smell of bursting peonies,

           bumble-dizzy bees bumping

                       butter-and-eggs

swollen buds thrusting

          in the lovesick air.

Leaden, laden, leavened, lavendered, loaded,

one big quivering nose, a moist surprise

hatched out in the nest of my body

April Pegasus-leaps

        in my pulse,

sun-shot                    Pan-piped

       heady, relentlessly

tender,

recklessly

sweet.

Three haiku

                                              

I.      Gift

         Snow, just one slow flake, settles

         subtle as a breath

         Lighting on

         my tongue.

II.     Trail

        

         Beside the still railroad tracks,

         A hot sun.  Song of

         Cicadas. 

         We ride.

III.    Back road

         

          The way unspools, retreating

          from a back window:

          Unreeling

          vision.

bridges (a Vancouver haiku)

                                    

latecity nightsky –

spill of black/Silk skirt:dancing

spritesparks/arcs of pearls

Fall

The antique

smell of

autumn

it charges me it

startles my nose:

leaves all turned

foxy,

shuddering into a

crumble of old

iron at my feet

in a great sustained

hallelujah of praise         /ancient trees are

praying up:  their frail arms

worshipping wide

                                               (some are

redheaded, some

blonde, a few

undecided, as if they

might make a change

at any time) The wind

shifts around like a

salesman,

                yellow of denture

full of rude/surprising charm

The antique smell of

autumn it changes me it

(startles my nose.    then all at once

an old old woman grundles

by/do I know her?

She is me   do I fear her?    A study in

black/clad with

a scent

the

lush whiff of

life-in-death

Violin

Falling into amber,
a buzzing blur of
honey and blonde,

strings as veins, a coursing, rush of taut

bliss, stretched across a

hollow core

of yearning:    Heart-bulb

                           lush

will vibrate as  /  hips of wood

shine like patient still eyes

and ochre sounds tease, tug

at hunger, reach, reach.

Fingers and strings kiss and

come apart, kiss and come apart,

The frail box eems in a subtle

pullulation, shy as a girl, lush as a

wild                           and

   /      whiff of mink:/                                all in a stillness

the bow sighs, sighs like a deep

diver, soughing the life in

this creature of tree, this female

fleshed of the organs of nature –

and all nature, all in a murmur

of intimate pain,

                           hewn

draws from this/heart of nothing

(this wood-held dusk, this

stirred scent of stored petals

this great warm handful of love)

a shining:  a chiming, a brining,

a pool of dark wine

spilled from the lustre of flowing eyes,

a seeing, a speaking, this songswept

woman of wood.

shiatsu

               

playing down the roots of my spine

like fleshly xylophone:    each vertebra

                            oceanic

humming with dim  /  secrets

                                                   ever

                     Every snake I have  /  handled

entwisted along the cord.    I am

awake now,

chorded by blunt fingers

strummed in the blood

which courses deep vermilion

in the sub-tectonic plates of my pelvis

The gut-song heaving upward

like a straining lifter, triumphant –

Selah, she is new!  (set loose

                                                 pure

in a slippery arcing dolphin of  /  prana)

splashed

in amniotic

baptism:

Behold, her crown.

Yes; or The Chagall Bride

    

                                     (i)                                         

i pray myself

Awake:   the smudge and

drudge of day

bleared by the bliss

of existence

a leaping fish of Be/the singing

blood that cries

 I am

                                          (ii)                                         

(i insist on you

the way I insist on

Yes:

an E. M. Forster yes

close beside the

everlasting “why”

                     (like man

and wife

why answers

Yes in an endless

                 “I do”

             

Poem on my fortieth (for my secondborn)

  

and bliss flicked

through, too, (quick)

like the flip of an

eyelid,

         /just

when did it pass over,

an infant surging to

      burstingly              woman?

a  /                beautiful  

when lost it I,             gone

                         these/

days, these days, when

               violet

did the  /  plum become a

           dead-

(small/sweet)

driedthing

She went by, my dayspring my

firehorse of a girl, life fiercing in

       glace-blue

her/          eyes:

        fleetingly                    this Astarte,

too/danced, Fred Astaired/                     toddle

turned to whirl as (slowly

my age

pulled ripe skin down

like the rind of old

fruit).

              Love fresh and juiceful

 when?/

       passed  into a darker

hymn, quiescence. 

The juice of jigs, all

         hard

that/ sex, gone by

too.  Ova will

        soon

dry/to peach pits

dessicated as hair.

                                   mainspring/

(She, my spring, my/

offspring, spurts still

                                   with

    that warm

juice,/sucked hard out

                 howling

of  my      /      heart)

                                                        

                                                      Guitar (for Keith)

  

How could I tell the way, tender as a lute,

his voice plays me,

especially over the wires, in the place

Without faces, a coiled, blue

Secrecy?  Sound strums off

 the tips of my fingers.

Some chords are stiff,

Almost hard; slick and shining,

stretched in iridescence

over my ringing ears.

My smile bars the strings.

The warm seal

Breaks; the peal

(spreading like a fugue

inside my chest) makes an

Easy, reaching harmony.

There are worlds beneath the words,

This overarching pattern, high

as a cat’s back; caught by the spreading

Nest of my hair.

  

                                               Bird in the hand

My bird in the

hand,

My bright dollar,

 blonde head

 Hard as a dime,

there in your

trench coat streaming

with spring, wet

as new robins

           or

Downy as stamens,

                          all

I would suck up/the

merry contempt in

your sleigh-bell

eyes,

Pepper my salt

with the wit of your

wounds,

Dive into the

iced-over pool

 of your

 voluptuous

 disdain.

Unbegun

I sense a tightly curled potential in an

alternate self/I have never met:  is it me or

thee?

What do you call the sound before the wind blows?

(and)

How many wolves precisely hide behind

the icebound pre-flood of your

unmelted eyes?  How would they bound,

unbound?  How does a glacier

feel when it groans and cracks like a

cannon, all its

                       sluicy sperm released?

How to judge the fertility of what has

not yet happened,

an approaching train rocketing backwards

into the sucked-back pre-time of imagination?

Would you smell like shredded wheat,

like gunfire, like an impending

surprise?  Would I be able to touch

you, at least with my mind,

or would all my juices, sunparched, bleached with shock,

frizzle away to the nothing in which it all began?

      

blue popsicle (for J. G.)

I live in your throat, curled

with a cat

 sleeping in sounds

 that drift daily/supple man-

music

What flavor?  I cannot

fathom/Yet shaking my head at you

(underwater) with surprise.

Joyborne, my heart smiles

(chiming) in sleepytime

                                          tune – is it

magic yet?/Dark out

now, I palm the

 chocolate

of your voice.  Dandle me:  cat

in a basket

 breathing our lonely, our smilenest in larksilent

candlesmoke - 

                                                 pomegranate wine

I sip at

your smile;

fire        light

 dances on your teeth

cat 

               

 on a hearthrug oh; comfort.

  

Close with you, on the sofa

(tight) breathing

in unison

                                                Succulent

rubies.   Heavy

with spice; promise

(of bursting kernels

shared on a back step

I’d stain my shirt)

                     
                   

                                                           Tryptich

  

I.                   Lover

    What is the song of you?

               Electric; blue

               A spurt of brimstone in the dark.

               I snatched your eyes

               from the fire,

               They lit the coals

               of my desire

 

               You’re

               sharks,

               you’ve turned my being

               to steam and sparks.

 I.            Tin man

              

                He walks through

                robot days,

                listening to the echo in his chest.

                Quicksilver tears

                spill from his liquid eyebeams

                to fuse his jaws in place

                And then one night it rains.

                Waiting

                for the tender mercy of an oilcan,

                he holds his rusted axe aloft

               

                Frozen in mid-chop.

 I.                    Skater’s Waltz

    We slice in new ice

               Keen figures with bright, honed blades

               carve in the virgin white

               Harsh cuts that cannot be erased.

               I let you go.  I trust you

               to move gently on my twinkling plane,

               You loose my hand

               to let me spin across your space.

               We slice in new ice

               Keen figures that cannot be erased.

                                                 I would say

  

I would say that you are springtime,

That lambs

could not be lovelier: laughing bells

Of eyes bright with seeing,

the shining, shone of you.

I would say that you are a

Renaissance painting

of a beautiful woman:

So restored

that the paint gleams; its sheen

Fresh from the brush; its wetness

smelling new.

I would say that you are living

Water:  I see tiny

perfect selves, suspended

upside-down in the silver

Merriment of your eyes.

If true, then I would say that you are

Not my brother; but some other; some

me not yet thought of; next year’s

Reflection

cast lightly (God’s amusement)

over waters

rendered still.

                                                              

                                                     

                                                           Gina

 sweet shy

dark girl          I’ve seen her

here before

  she always wore the best clothes

(silvery things/bangles

feathered skirts

necklace made

from the teeth of a wolf)

now I see Gina in the ward

kitchen.        Still beautiful

big-eyed

part Cree          her hair tied back

she shows me the tracings of

partly-healed               gashes

sewn back together in

a gridwork

                                                                 hands/

on her arms,                                                 wrists.

She must be twenty or so

No one comes to visit

Once she had a boyfriend

but he got sick too

                                           

                                                                    

  fantasy

I dreamed of a petting zoo 
with live men in it

all naked in their splendor

some

fuzzy, some smooth

all smelling good

of dark leather/gull feather

spanish heather

eating their golden chest hair

like shredded wheat

and leaving whenever we feel like it

could we name them?  No,

that would be getting involved.

But we’d remember their

sad eyes at noon

(feeding time – go feed the bulls)

some luscious sea-blue, some rich as

melted chocolate.