to write on paper cold and dark    is to dream the cross as crystal

is it light i see through a tear in translucence    or the voice i once sent forth

water pulls my hand deep into its pockets    loves the drowning i do not love

eyes of the dead finally open and open    each  knot in the moon untied

flood is for the rescue of something held over our heads    then mud turning back into children

in colors opposed to color    in the garden of a smothered hand    she painted her windows open

a simple word bleeding, wrapped in a shroud    the sky as barefoot as birds

in the long silence of the lie is the child you first loved forcing his ashes to sing

no laurel could touch me while the poet was living when God was the odor of the moon

murmur of a wave whose body is bleeding :: what i see beyond the end of the rose

we know what is coming is no more closed than the blade lying in bed beside me

the way home keeps changing its face until i have no life that hasn't started to live

bending against the snow that falls from God    nothing else can be so still

the awful defeat of a little town    is a wind or a star inside me

where the other face of night is looking    is to be kissed by what the young poet saw

in the sands of the moon a dream horse roams    thus i had no model for life

in the voice of the dew as it bleeds a rose    if i forget the origin of love

i remember the motionless hanging    as if to die    in the sky of another's pain

who wiped the ears of the dust away and sang without voice the creation of song