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white moon now thru the tent where Poor Tom brings his old father up to th’ extreme verge— my companions asleep far across the clearing, their logsawing complement to roaring winds above the highest firs— this a.m., their kayaks were taken in raging cross-currents, yet one dipped & feathered merely with a paddle tip, & found the center— to float where the heart slows, the ear tuned to the humming of that silence none hears in the smug city where blindness comes not from cruelty, but the stealth of routine— even such an eye- less man may need to see his life’s a miracle, O moon thru my tentflap now— |
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along this silent path among cliffs thru terraced green you’ll sing beneath your breath where the poet once dreamed of his escape thru the clouds, where whole populations fled to rebuild shattered dreams, hands in the moist earth— stone masons who shaped the rock attentively, that it might interlock & honor earth that gave both seed & harvest in the sweep of seasons—ghosts today, they wander with you, picking your pockets, to know what dreams you bring to this place, what breath you leave among these rocks, what song you gather in your backpack & basket of silence: here, the lost mother weeping for her child borne to minutes of love before its last breath, the father pouring a lifetime’s devotion thru his hands, his face red with defeated love yet shining in all the brilliance of that loss—here, the lovers moving together, their short gasps echoing in a great sigh thru which another child comes—here, the lost father who could not face the wreck of his love in his own child’s eyes, his sorrow like a hermit lost in the passes of his own valleys, his heart bursting with roses he could not bring to his own table—here, warriors cut down like corn on a day as crisp as this, eyes turning skyward one last time, up to the light as their blood gushes out on fertile ground, shining path where arms & legs of the dead clutch & kick at heaven, vanishing dreams of hungry ghosts. so you come, bringing blessings & eyes to flush the tears that still pool in the world’s grief thru all the rages of lost centuries, all the weeping sisters crying for lovers that never appeared, all the lost brothers marched thru barbed wire to death’s final anonymity in the last bursts they’d ever hear, minds turned inward to their mother’s cries on the day they forced their way into this light, compassion now for them all: that your dream be clear when you come to this pass, I send you this wish where tender petals turn, open in both darkness and light. |
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O, I could wow ‘em when I had the stage— I had those boys singing in the aisles calling out my name with roses— O those hip shakes, O let go! & wild, wild eyes every night under the lights— so when you called, I o’erlooked my torso, once without a stitch (oho!) of fat, & saw I’d not be what I was yet O the hap of it, to be in my chartreuse gown & my feathers again, to sing & leap again—if only once—& feel my legs carry me up in my fishnet stockings & slippers, to turn again & sing again— so I dream, alone on my bed, & peer into that mirror & see that sweet-faced boy now valiantly—is it age? hoping to live out some fantasy?— or art, the love, the feel of it— moving out into those lights & just letting go, letting be, the rush of breathing in a wild turn, sighing again & again, beyond the image we make for ourselves. O to come again for you, come once more to that dazzling light! |
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longdead in his dream the boys leap one by one over the cliff into the wild splash & the singing current—the tow pulling them down into green dark & silt where the sunken trees fell & were pinned as well, great black branches looming up in the murk, fish tearing the guts of whitened & bloated corpses as their eyes stared, marbled spheres like moons glowing in the dark. by night, the water clears, the shadow moon reflects off the pale carcasses— & he is awake, panting, the moon shining thru his midnight window. he hears the voices of thousands singing & weeping as police line up & swat batons swat batons swat batons & march march march into the now-screaming singers, their ranks breaking—the one-eyed bard chanting for calm—the ranks all fled, he left alone to sweat on a factory floor, in a madhouse swabbing urinals. now the dreams are all moonlit, no destination & yet this weary traveler sings in his passing steps, careless in the theatre of stars where the dead
walk with him daily, nightly, old companions urging him to rest as even days grow darker, the news ever more ominous. he must consider the sleek craft of his final voyages, the turns in his last river, the song he will compose to take him beyond his last lay to sing in dreams where his companions fled, to learn to walk among the living like a shadow in the daylight of their certainties, waiting for them to leap at last. |