the first dawn is too small to wake

the soul. but an island emerges. eyes

reopen. limits expand to the shape of our hands.

 

water pulls my secret deep into

its pockets. loves the drowning i do not

love. where the words that won't let me write survive.

 

every moon in old clothes finds its way

to my room. every scar learning the way of shadow.

we stand together. arrayed like sunflowers. facing the void.

 

the horse comes back alone. but there is 

no alone. no empty bed. no love that is not 

pain. no time to perfect one's art. no horse.

 

small lake. long journey of sky.

sky that sang at the birth of time...

of a blue eye. of a dark day.

 

when i find you you no longer

have age. one who is yet to come.

hole in the sky with mists and cliffs. pathless.

 

dawn. the blouse of the sky

spreads open. your ear soft

against the mouth of my blood.

 

space in the attic was the source of hush.

then heat, then hands. ages of dust fell from those hands.

dew upon a faultless mountain.

 

sunlight is a room where nothing

is forgotten. a gate left open.

poems one would be glad to have written.

 

like a red corpuscular heart. like the swim

in a midnight harbor. with the strength of curved lines.

spirals. i saw the rings of saturn.

 

who is ironweed. is the holy

motive of wildflower. green begins to rain

inside chrysalis. and within rain's iron interiority. a torch.

 

may your voice be the cord that

lowers my heart. through foam and stone.

into the flow of the ancient green.

 

the blue hills open a window.

i greet the poem with calloused hands.

silence ticking in the walls.

 

our few possessions are weighed leaving the bus.

some clothes, a few toiletries. all we will have.

whether dying forward. whether living back.

 

we stand at the edge of drowning.

the water is small. familiar and unknowingly

deep. silent fish slip through the night around us.

 

the path opens between the eyes of a deer.

a child discovers his indefinite sky.

my hands stroke a wind that has lived out its life.

 

nothing raked the wind. no cry

split the trees. until

what was born fell silent.

 

rusts and weaknesses pool in low

lonely places. where i thought water would listen.

to the mouth of every sigh.

 

not to know stones are alive, i

could not converse with silence.

my shadow would rest.

 

death will remove its shoes. and

the heart begin its return migration

alone. walking on water. breathing stone.

 

the small poem :: knife of brief life

 

another world's end.

dimensions of the box:

silence by silence by silence.

 

lift up the sheet where

sleep spills its blood.

ferns drip in the shade.

 

huge blue wings rise, fly. flow away.

listen and hear nothing.

lake unhurried. clouds fully awake.

 

such turmoil in dreams! so many

souls unliving! psyche's cauldron brewing

ashes, a beginning....

 

we begin our heart        with one wing