ACROSS THE GREAT DIVIDE
(OR WHAT HE REALLY MEANT)
Don't care if you
take me literally, Mama
Just take me
83
AU LAIT
The ghosts upstairs
are moving furniture at night
while the rest of the world
sends out for coffee
1/83
ASCENT OF MAN
—for Seamus Heaney
Each dark night carries its own cloud
to measure the flight of birds.
Seals slip upriver to steal souls
& sing the memory of Sweeney to sleep.
It is difficult to single out a shadow
of an individual tree in the forest.
In steamy cafés, the refrain
of silverware & coffee cups
solitary scores orchestrated
simultaneously while the canvas
of vertical history
is painted on the walls of the living
in the streets, & buried in the rift
of the Olduvai Gorge.
1983
BOTTOM OF THE NINTH
Our hearts catch an inside curve.
We try to sneak past each other
but the umpire yells foul play
and we are lost at the bottom of the ninth.
The player on third tries to steal home
but the bases are loaded and the score's
zero to zero in the moon's favor.
1983
CLOTHED LIKE GREEN BRIDES
Amid green hills
transparent trees
hide wintered forms
of houses waiting
in silence.
1/83
COELACANTH
Why can't you hear
the incandescent humming
of the fish in my womb
as you bend to touch me?
2/83
CRAW
I am trying hard not to think
of the contaminated water.
I raise a glass to my lips
only to discover the throat has memory.
1983
FOR MARILYN
Time is scented,
secret pearl hidden within the folds
of the oyster
The leaf of a blackbird
shaken loose
flutters down toward its own death
Corpses of flowers—
rose petals beneath
Marilyn's stacatto heels
6/83
GRANDMOTHER'S DAUGHTER
as I approach my 31st year,
sometimes I see the world
through the memories of my grandmother:
her eyes watching me view the world
through a 12-year-old's vision.
2/83
Lear's pelican daughters
offer little solace.
Like cactus, their hearts beat
only once every hundred years.
They never dance the sinuous twist
of ht flesh.
2/82
Marguerites growing
amid the marble soils of Crete.
Amid the large columns of bones.
Marguerites strewn across the soil of Crete
blooming between marble columns
and the bones of the temples.
Marguerites holding the clouds up
and keeping the sky at bay.
8/13/1983
MOTHLIGHT
As you breathe in the light,
darkness,
softly fallen
from your face
reveals these burnt wings
rekindled
in your eyes.
11/23/83
MUSIC NOTES
A violin
breaks the glass.
Seedlings push up earth
as a worm dances to the music.
2/83
NIGHT HERON
Night anchors on the dock
where the marsh heron's mask
is untouched by muddy water.
Only the slender bones of his legs
separate him from water and air.
2/83
(NOT)
cats
(not)
sseing
eye to eye
with
dogs
83
OROVILLE 11/83
Waiters silent mouth cowboy songs
a silent croon, unintelligible, forgettable.
One of the good old boys
butters his toast up the local law,
the biggest, and only game in town.
11/1983
The violin's small scale
climbs above the metronome,
small bejeweled clicks
patterning mountains of notes,
increasing in tempo,
a sonic pitch invades,
the strings lose their time,
the bow loosens
and the hand falls silent.
9/1/1983
VIRGO
In the moonlight,
naked,
I will cook fish
8/83
