To Sleep

                               A blinking jet plane

                               distant with fuel

                               and hunger

                               takes off low

                               to the bitter ground

                               A nearby fluster

                               of  small wet sparrows 

                               feather-beats its way

                               through a covey of long  

                               whispers drawn thin with a  

                               sudden escape from

                               fake dangers in the yews

                               A scrawny dark river unfurls

                               her swollen arms, flows

                               her whole night's blood long

                               and sparkling, curls

                               beneath the humming

                               breast and heaven’s newest

                               strain 

                               Crickets and stars harp
                               well into the darkness,
                               harp deeply through the silence,

                               harp on and on about the gravel

                               distance of roads long ago while

                               soft underbellies of young

                               white clouds draw silently near

                               looking for new milk

 

                               Now the lilacs of summer

                               droop with ripe aromas;

                               iridescent hummingbirds,

                               green and dark, plump themselves

                               full of small-blossomed secrets

                               too noiseless and small for us to know 

                               Clean summer sheets

                               that once gathered us close

                               in their soft linen flames

                               now cover us with sleep, sleep

                               in our own silences, our own bitter skies,

                               our own familiar ceilings full of blank
                               bright stars who never look back

                               at their own burning

                                         

                                           Winter Table

              

                                            I see your hands

                                            at rest, still

                                            present at the table,

                                            present in all the worlds

                                            we have shared.

                                            I see

              

                                            your fingers now,

                                            relaxed and slow moving,

                                            sculpting dry bread crumbs

                                            into soft deft rows along  

                                            wood grains of the table,

                                            tracing ancient circles

                                            in the dark-stained wood

                                            which many hopes have failed                   

                                            

                                            to notice up to now.  How

                                            stubborn is the soup ring

                                            that clings to the sides

                                            of each dry bowl, each

                                            story told about warm houses

                                            and acorns planted and

                                            new rivers in our dreams

                                            that keep us watered and  

                                            alive, only

                                            to be washed away again

                                            and again with all the silent

                                            signs.  This time,   

                                            may the hands we fold

                                            rest together
 

                                            in the broken stories, in

                                            the many places we have been, in the

                                            music of snowfall,

                                            the milky new silence

                                            of communion.  

                                 


                                 Make Me

                                 I miss the water lilies

                                 who float in the marsh,

                                 blossom in the sun,

                                 close themselves off each night

                                 to everything.

                                 I miss the bark of sentry trees,

                                 the roughness, the armor, the beautiful

                                 silence they make

                                 when we dissolve.

                                 I will never understand the glee

                                 of dogs who roll in the stench of death—

                                 is it to absorb the facts?  the obvious

                                 short victory over obeisance?  Or is it

                                 just a bad-smelling story they tell

                                 for all living things to hear?

                                 Here I fly, well, perhaps not with the birds

                                 or the bugs or the machines,

                                 but into my own terrestrial mind

                                 where I try to notice everything—

                                 the jewels, the harmony, the wild trees

                                 who frolic even on an unseen wind.  

                                 So who am I

                                 to argue with clouds

                                 who stand much taller, wider, grander,

                                 made mostly of the same wet stuff,

                                 who float for the sake of floating,

                                 stare for the sake of staring

                                 just like me?         

                            


                            Woman at the Well

                            After that last exchange, beauty

                            slipped from my grinning,

                            slipped from my strong right hand,

                            slipped from cold gray clouds

                            the way hard-colored rain slips into

                            deeply pondered ground.  Even then we

                            could clearly see that only certain trees

                            are made to ooze with roots and mercy.

                            A cowering cloud

                            (once loomed above the ocean)

                            now bends her sweet lungs low

                            now hums into fleshy ears

                            now rolls beneath our fancy shoes

                            and pelts our flimsy preacher faces

                            with the salty exhalation

                            of an entire ocean's blather.

                            Before all of this, a beautiful acorn

                            (now forgotten) tottered and spun

                            on a shallow surge of foam,

                            blinked and bubbled toward

                            the great black shore, then rolled back

                            with hapless ease until the next wave came

                            to erase all trails and visions

                            of where it once began to

                            drown in its own flame.

                            We should have held a little longer

                            to those intermittent waves

                            the opportunities for silence

                            the rhythms we found.  We should have

                            kept them in a clear glass jar

                            within the city's open gates

                            until our own pale hands could unfold like windows

                            to show the secrets we had made, secrets

                            that keep us pointed toward

                            the water I have always known

                            and will always carry.

                             Pieces of 3 a.m.
                                   
                                    Slip steel enters unwelcome,

                             wet cold, grumbling dusk-gray,
                             ridiculous.  Apple blossoms
                             hang ready to open and fall
                             again.
                        
                             Here we are, hungry and dull,
                             impatient for light, impatient
                             for violet blue, dark ocean blue,
                             baby powder blue, gold crimson fertile blue,
                             long horizon blue. 

                             Our own birth blue
                             will not give way
                             even to this cold, even
                             to this unscented candle glow
                             which is not ours to give.
                            
                             We wander unsteadily
                             in the spaces we are given
                               unmindful,

                             unable to fathom the silence
                             of lush river grass, fields of waving
                             stones, shared subtle breathing
                             that mourns the loss
                             of days too wet to ponder
                             love or sleep or wounds.

                             The Rabbit Prayer

                             We sense a holy presence

                             from inside the fur, staring through
                             another shimmering darkness.  Beyond is
                             a midnight curtain of enormous eyes,
                             a looming family portrait of old trees
                             who sway peacefully beneath our moon.
                             Unseen friends sleep silently in the
                             palm of other hollow dens. 
                             The pups maintain a mix of sleep
                             and communal sheltered breathing
                             in a space no larger than a
                             human's cupped hands.
                             This is how we pass the night:
                             the overflowing clouds above,
                             scattered crows who clutter the dawn,
                             tall unkempt grass barely bending
                             in a way that hints at the whispers
                             we might be missing still.

                            

                            

 

                             Death of Someone Else

                             If you should ask her name,

                             I would have to answer, from
                             high above the stars, that a terrible wind
                             has taken her, alive.  She has departed
                             with only her father’s name, flowing now
                             on a river of scars and breathing.  She is
                             newly partnered with fluid silence and
                             has left her old voice on the low dog’s floor
                             to shed unwanted fur which clings like love
                             to everything she wears.  She writes
                             occasionally.  We can find her words flocking
                             around inner beauty and tragedies which
                             chuckle vaguely and peck for buried seeds
                             like masked November chickadees furled
                             against her cold new cold.  She lives on
                             the corner near a church’s bells, unsure of
                             herself—except for the sound of her
                             own noisy gong.  She has unfeeling
                             hands that no longer feel for me.  Her luscious
                             warm soup fingers are fresh but now cold.   
                             First snow and pictures litter the ground,
                             not everywhere, but everywhere enough
                             to know how cold it is without her.