what the heart knows –
does it ever see farther
than the stains on the shirt,
the little white dime-sized scribbles
telling what happened to you today?
a picture by Miro illuminates
the weight of birds. Secret-keeping bird
whose flight extends above two lovers,
her tail a curling question mark revealing
the unknown?
or so Miro suggests.
it must be larger, I insist.
it must be larger than that.
you and I once found a butterfly fresh in death.
I wanted to examine its long mouth
but its wing-powders rubbed onto my hands
so I painted your cheeks
and you mine
and we became for several hours, winged,
a dayless spring
insensible to passing.
we sill insist on tossing birds
into the sky,
expect the sudden
lilt of air that won’t
refuse the climb.
we frown when surging inhalation
won’t suspend,
but peaks, and when,
alone,
the kaleidoscope we once used
shifts
winter’s migratory patterns
birdlessly.
**************
published in New Delta Review, fall/winter 2003 issue
Upstairs the shovel leans against unhinged windows.
You have walked into the open light of the churchyard
Littered with the bones of birds in piles –
piles of old birds.
Rows of sweat uncurl along your neck.
You have asked me into the narrow ladder shaft
Climbing the steeple – dark, maculate, safe –
We open into a box of light, the small, high grave
Where the chalky bodies of birds unwind
Among other birds, sinews undoing. You lean
A hand against the shovel, wrapping fingers around
The handle, lacing the prayer-fist. Insistent remnants of stained glass
Caw
Should I remember the story of Icarus
Breaking? Exploring the attic, we pitch
Weak steps across rafters, empty space
Yawning toward the worn floor
Or not so empty, perhaps. The slow timbre of your movement
Falls against dust motes dancing in the golden light
That sifts through colored glass. It is an old church, white-steepled –
Pointing or piercing toward,
And echoing
the faint pealing of your working skin, the turning
to dust as you root your shovel again into the bird pile
to toss the dead from high windows.
***************
published winter 2003, Portland Literary Review Journal
You wait, find yourself verging on the gap
That hems together the play of distances -
The cuff gesturing toward the wood floor,
The wood floor expecting the wool cuff,
The collapsing particulars of the space
In which two lean in but cannot meet -
Black lines on white paper:
A triangle left open at the top
Nothing entering the gap to collect at the bottom.
Cold abstractions haunted by echoes of me, and me…
Folding like a Z on a man’s leather couch,
To cross vixen boots and smoke, not asking,
Not lazy, but halting and now remembering only halting:
The uselessness of mine shafts, gated
Holes that gape toward a mappable nothing;
The turning of traffic lights with no cars moving;
The invitation of stairs in empty garages.
There is nothing to hate but mechanics.
This is a small vision, pushing through windows
Screened grey by wire grids, caught like a panty
On a tree branch – or no, nothing so whimsical –
Maybe halted oncoming by the monolith canyonlands
Downtown. The gaze stills while still discreet movement
Itches slowly between the walls of houses –
There are cockroaches moving in New Orleans,
Cats slinking behind parked cars and through gardens
Sick with the stranglehold of their singular luridness.
Their flowers pop open and sigh, heads hanging
In the beat thrum thrum of sweltering Augusts.
And the fan in the house wishes over the head,
Holding tightly its high ceiling, not to be alone
Alone
Alone
Alone
Alone
In directing movement.
***************
published 2003, Antietam Review
