when lips are long closed :: memory must breathe through skin

***

some forget to breathe and dream :: ways of seeing fall like leaves

 

plum tree dead.

sighs in the wind that have not known being human.

thin is the wall that separates us.

when i am new to the other dark :: shall i remember the face of light

 

 

sycamore shines like a skull. happy to be alone. alive.

we pull off our clothes. look far into each other.

see the moon feeding on our desires.

 

these hands are like brothers. one weaker than the other.

one loved more. each understands gestures and shadow.

who is the one wounded whose wounds don't show?

 

the soul of a tree stands in a bit of amber.

as it stood in a promised rain. as all things begin

in silence and stone. where every faltering path ends.

at the end of life time unravels

into color. one discovers there are colors

that have never been inhabited.

 

 

a small horse leans into her juniper tree.

the man who never travelled peels himself from the wall.

a roof begins to leak. good fortune.

one silence holds shadow and sun.

 

some of spring's small teeth shall be my own

 

whose dying breath has washed ashore as bits of polished glass

 

a branch of sky breaks with a whisper the boy will never forget

snow is the joy i shovel

 

 

night dreams of a star climbing the cold crooked sky.

burden of dignity broken apart.

into a trembling bed where his heart will stop.

 

why taste red.

why write rain.

a woman and a man live alone together.

one body where death and the not yet real mingle.

beasts pass through their dreams without disturbing either soul.

the moon in their throat baying.

 

 

the shot to my chest woke me up. darkness.

snow falling through the night. our bed was warm,

breathing. god had not died.

 

lives cautiously within the sound of his own name.

trusts windows that question the passage of light.

will never understand being shaken by the wind.

snow

free fall and crystalline

intricate machines of vanished moments

the outside of silence

 

 

her blue eyes ached seeing newborn earth. shadows,

luminous, of wind-killing trees. left old choices on the floor

around her bed. fragrance of dusk, decay and lost beauty.

 

from an inscription etched on water i learned to tie

a small voice to falling leaves.

when i find you will you be looking for me?

will we know which one is alive?

 

liquid. as a lake between two waters.

as the flooded ark of home.

my shadow in water shall die of thirst.

 

found a coin in last night's loam. 

smaller than silver. larger than gold. 

the child's cup of moonlight throws a blue shadow. 

where mist rakes its tines. 

soul throbs.

 

she says we are what we cannot see.

something eternal worn down to the human.

whose blood has some light from the birth of the sky.

 

a blue lake sleeps at the foot of a blue mountain. where my 

life is an island adrift. poems sail into a mirrorless day.

each end of the sky moored to a single blue tree.

 

cedar smoke. mesas. the cranes will come back. strange

that a naked mind is here at all. wisdom turns to dust and dust

becomes wisdom. why are the names of our angels unknown?

 

rain falls without clouds. without sky. without judgment. timber

by timber the old structures are brought down. a poet of white flowers,

lying near death, discovers salt in the depths of heaven.

 

love song. we seem to have forgotten

the iron fence

in the fog.

 

being of one body, we undress together. down to a satchel

of lost poems. love hides nothing. lives in veins.

god's heartbeat's heard. when one pounds on stone.

 

the night you are not conceived silent messengers

come and go. to say a dark cathedral better houses the moon.

let me never forget how i abandoned my home.

 

skin forms around the shadows it will hold within. milk mixed with

night forms blood. the patient ship has raised up its lanterns. Jesus-like.

gnawed by the sea. while a simple cairn endures the frost.