Cool the winds
that swept from it
and silent save an owl at night, the deer
made slow way down the slope
and crunched their presence out to me
till frightened
by a car or cry, they'd crack away
through knotted sumac.

A packet still of wilderness,
the meditative moon
stood on the crest sometimes
like holiness. Honeysuckle
tucked to every inch of it, would roll
into the kitchen
catch my heart, caress my mornings
with the carried scent of grace.

The face is gone. The yellow shovel
clawed up every clod save at the very top,
a line of saplings stand there naked,
last line holding, thin and sad.

Brown and chewed with woodchips left in
heaps like entrails. When it rains
it runs with mud
then bakes with sun
and brings me only dust and dirt
and memory
of deer who knew the secret way
their hooves had brailled them down to streams
that only they could find
within the bramble
gone for good.

A hundred years
of trees and dreams cut down so
pampered children of the baby boomers
could, with daddy's credit card
divert to malls and aimlessly
lean empty head to wooden one, discussing
'how the wide new trolley cars' flew faster
carting
zombied progeny
unto their shiny temple.





Proof

There it was
like blood
bright on the page,
the past entanglements,
the crotch rubbed raw with her,
I felt, not foolish, but
redundant.
And with that thought, it blinked out, new star
dipped, a nebula had died. There are no singular points
of absolute congruity; there's fluid, drop
like every other
..................drop
and life goes on.





Rain

Just rain.
Drop down and slur me
from pain to percussion.

Beat out your drum
and your din.

Bring on the beating
that kindly unwinds
the mind
of memory
and muck
and blame
and regret
so that all of the hurting
inside of the head
can be softened
and soothed
with simply
the rain.
Kindly break in
with your drumming on tin.

I am spelled out in clusters
of 'why didn't you's'
and 'why didn't I's,
and a frightening assortment
of 'why didn't WE'S'
in the same old refrain
so please,
just now

just rain.

Getting Religion

He wept against the far wall,
looking overcome with something creeping
over him like grace.
His hand was full of want. She stood, not shamed, but
lovesoft: let-go-and-let-me-know-if-this-is-what-you-need
my love, my life, this full submission. Look,
I did it; did the thing you couldn't say,
now let me hear it. Hear you nearer now, the breath
is what I want.
He sobbed just once,
and like a good boy, came. She cooed him through
and ever since that day, he prayed. She was
his only saint.
..........."Sweet Lady, love the child
of desperation."





The Hourglass

Looking aghast.
Looking belatedly through the glass
where hours from bubble
to bubble had passed, unaware.

Swearing the ticking
of clocks and of hearts
was in no way related,
that all things are fated,
that two souls are mated intrinsically,
I must admit there crept a day
that slid upon me from behind
to find your smooth eviction from my hopes.

A slow, narcotic shifting
while the sands had sifted through,
and poppies shot up red, reclusive rows
around the years.





Salome

The shorts, perhaps,
too tight, too much
temptation. The 15 year old sunburned
thighs
the kind of butt that casts a curve
when caught, the sun behind- perhaps as well
it was the smell of summer grass and roses
with their female parts
sweet curled at edges, fleshy pink
just at your rim of vision as you tackled me
and both were brought to ground.
We'd horsed around
before, but this was darker
and you didn't move at first.

Full weight, your belly at my back,
but then you kind of shifted, sliding up and down
and slow, so slow and heavy, rolling
gluteus to groin,
worked with sawing motions in that
fragrant summer dirt. I heard your heavy breathing
just before your swollen penis started pushing at the cotton
madras cloth
between my buttocks.
How perfectly it fit, like brautwurst
laid in pillowed bun, till stricken,
huffing sounds
informed me that our fun had turned to
something else. My cheek was warm and moist
from pants and semi-sobs till finally, you
jerked
and lay so still I thought
you'd died.

You rolled away. Your head
curved toward your chest,
embarrassed, lost in shame, a dark spot
at your crotch. I'd haven hugged you had you let me
as I squeezed my buttocks
tightly
until I too felt the wet; you were much older
and ashamed, but I was older still in ways I couldn't
have explained. You
didn't
stand a chance. My name that day
was Salome, John.
You had
the head
I wanted.





Sign Language

She's doing it again,
moving furniture around.
I hate that; cleaning, cleaning,
never letting dust settle,
or my
stomach,
or my sense
of who I am
here, in this house
where I'm supposed to feel
at ease, I bark knees
off coffee table legs, reminding me
of the stranger
I've become. Unfamiliar in my life is what she does
to me

-so
I can't, so I can't
forget that she
is here, or get too
comfortable
without her.





Promise Kept

Remember
I was clear
as clear can be,
but you misread me
even
then; even when the stakes were very high.
You must have seen it
as a bluff, a huff
of temper
but I am as I've always been.
A child who turns on constancy,
who looks for that at center; when it's gone
or broken,
though I cannot fly, I'm like a
pigeon
walking
in the snow, whose
wings, too cold to flap in frigid air
will walk. The red-socked feet
make tracks, small, four-toed arrows,
pointing
in a new direction,
not north or south, but
but determinedly away; carrying its
message
elsewhere.





Silent Picture Show

Late night sick call priest slow rising,
sleepy from the rumpled warmth of sheets,
carrying the Body of the Christ
in golden pyx, can see his breath.
The night is cold.

Driven to a bedside
like the reaper come to claim the corpus,
Kyries long faded into breath, he brings
the ritual for wrapping up, for blessings
and the oil.

Every sense anointed: eyes and ears
and lips that were so troublesome in life,
he wipes them clean. He does not
hold the corpse. He does not hug the nurse
or any staff along the corridor who look
a minute only, having seen this man
before.

And on his way to car
beneath the coldest moon,
he watches
as a crone framed in the window overhead
digs deeper, and still deeper
at a maidenhead
she'd lost behind a silent picture show.
He doesn't know where sadness comes from,
only
that his blood, his prayers are stuck in time
-they have nowhere to go.





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