THROUGH WINTER’S VEIL
In the snowbound world
lifted off its tracks
in a windy Nor’easter years ago
my girl burst in the door
fresh from the mall,
face aglow. She couldn’t
wait to show it – the tiny
little thing of lace,
strapless, backless
with a tulle, tutu skirt
all pale and blushing
like a rose.
Who am I to tamp down
anyone’s ecstasy – but really?
The lace we were watching
had piled up to ten inches
wrapping cars and ground;
and that path I’d shoveled…
But oh, that spring dance –
it was 7th, 8th grade – so
fluttery, buttery –
The howling winds,
its frosty cheeks, pursed lips
kissed the innocence
a whisper tucked in its bluster.
Loose Lines, Winter Storm
The snow is slicing at itself at three angles, like three samurai. Fascinated, the train conductor stops to watch.
A sickly green light, absinthe tint, is stuck in the globe of a streetlight.
A white lacquered ladder leans against a milk factory, in the corner.
In our all-white winter circus, trapeze artists will walk on lines of charcoal.
The winter day, shiny as a tin can
Transparent as aerosol
Medicinal, flat on the tongue
How I Learned to Love the Bomb Cyclone or The Shape of Snow
Needlepoint of snow in the streetlight
cross stitches in the gusting wind.
Cars begin to disappear, the nearby elms
fade in the distance.
By the shore, four sharks roll up,
bone dead, though a dog learns
to amuse himself with a hill and a sled.
Warm inside, a fire rages like twin sisters,
one blond tresses, the other red-headed.
The fire in the fireplace begins to die.
“I’ll always love you!” shouts the child.
In Autumn’s Vase
Glass so thin today,
we in the lower bowl
are swelled by light and air,
clear atmosphere, brilliantly
tinted by elm trees
a hundred feet above our heads
The yellow jazzes
even if it’s November’s hour glass;
then sands ting and settle,
our limbs replete, filled.
Shift your excellent body under mine:
the hour glass flips again.
Thanks to C.D. Wright for the “excellent” line.
In Crisis: Poignancy
Attempt emergency resuscitation:
it lays on a pyre of fighting words,
gasping and fluttering.
The lilting head of a blue hydrangea
thick and petalled, thinking.
Even brooding is old-fashioned.
Bludgeon me with your compassion.
Shout it till you’re blue in the face: I love you, stupid!
Let Me Be Clear as a coffin lid.
Brood your way through the American spirit
back to the Scarlet Letter.
Let’s define terms first: “we” “who” “are”
Hips still thin as pencil stubs, blonde cascading hair
dirty school girl look
What creature wouldn’t want to jump them
old as day
the Bible’s full of it
Let’s all have another cup.
The word ex-patriot makes me blue.
I’m in exile from being an ex-pat.
Singing is a celebration of oxygen.
The celebration of oxygen is every artist’s charge.
If there’s one thing you do, celebrate oxygen!
The RITES OF MAY
to Don DeLillo
The tail end of a violent semester
parents rush in with their Suburbans
a mixed bag of doubled emotions
Living next to Brown I see
the flying styrofoam pitched by mother
in a pique of anger. The Chinese doctor
beside her fares no better, Pacman
mattress strapped onto his New York beemer.
Battered chairs, resculpted fans
twisted bike frames blind, without eyes
crutches, messy Amazon boxes; wait –
Is this Lourdes? Against a wall
heaps of discarded crutches – the plagued can walk!
Oh, the disarray of time, the leap
from melancholy autumn, sentimental
goodbyes amidst the burnished elms.
Separation then seemed so stark; turns out
(frat boys belch while pretending to help)
shedding wasn’t forever.
Relief! My own sassy, long-haired girls
are heading home – and with curated
transition will settle in.
It isn’t “Sunrise, Sunset” which I played
on the black and white upright at nine
feeling sorry for the parents bereft
It’s refeathering – the kids are moving
back in.
The Enlightened
Are flushing out darkness.
They have reasoned down
the dome of the sky.
There is only starry light, not starry
night. Eyes refuse to close,
we are a dreamless troubled lot.
Our nerves catch every
morsel of bread tossed to us,
sick from being overfed.
Yet we are starving, hungry still.
Love me in the cellar
behind the stairs.
Burrow deep so I may remember
the questing of bells, the touch of my
own hand.
January 20, 2017
Something is happening back in Washington,
though we are 40,000 feet above the Mediterranean.
We are rising high, the scalloped
edge of the Holy Land a mere hem below,
through unraveling skeins of clouds,
the hush unearthly.
It is 18:30, late day rays spreading,
just another day ending. Look! – I gasp –
the liquid fuchsia in the
untouchable distance
(while seven hours back, he
is laying his small hand on his family Bible)
That red lake of light pooled in the clouds!
Clearly not the devil’s stirring pot –
too beautiful. No sinners turned upside down
no naked bodies skinned
although we don’t have our binoculars handy.
18:45; 19:00. The tide is turning.
He wrests the podium. Fans are
magnified in his mind. Although we are in
Lebanese airspace, soon over Turkey, we can
practically see the spottiness of the crowd.
In Rome, the Tiber is misting moodily,
Paris birds are skittering gaily
in the frozen fountains of the Tuilleries.
No matter where we are
(40,000 feet above the Mediterranean),
the world is spinning madly.
Le Soir
The crickets chant
an endless round
soft, softer still
they melt and falter
you can hardly
hear their dervish call
a distant planet
a rubbed-out moon
they woo my heart
as big as the abyss
they sing without a sound
beyond the open door
Ode to a Cold
Cold of the ancients! My head
Is a stone. O sun, the fog is lifting.
Bring me some lightness and
Patience.
Streams of the healthy rush
To jobs in cities. My labor is breathing
And easing the drip. Curtains
Of it slip.
When I talk, no one hears,
And when they talk, I can’t hear.
Opacity! Tea,
More tea.
Steaming water: a bath to
Breathe into. Muscles give way
To grapefuit and citrus
And eucalyptus.
I bow, bow to clouds,
To shreds of cirrus as naturally
My viscosity gives way
To bliss.
Riffing with My Daughters after the Sharansky-Douglas Show