moon you have set

moon—

you have set

beneath the moss-bog,

under the weight of baked

apple-berry and  her tight stars

of blooms—under

 and inside the thin throat

of the adagio carnivore

her hooded chin, her patient

wait for prey--

did you push her open? 

if I folded back her curled,

red-veined leaves,

 would you

be

angled across the cup

of her stored water?

she has brined

you.

haven’t you loved

  every slow glide

of you

and she?

my nose is

a voyeur for this scent

and the distance is brief

(beneath the skin) from the turn

of my eye

to the silica

swaying in every lung

of simple wind.  i’d give up seeing

you if i could,

after pulling that plant

into my face,

make you my skin,

my liquid memory

then I would not have

to wait for the dark

to break you down,

to watch  you

slip into my room

and pilot over the floor.

All I would have

to be is

what that pitcher plant already is:

a deep bow,

a slow abiding decay,

 and a hood closed like lips

over what once may have been prey

but is now maker

cinched, even if briefly,

within the graven wind.

one window

moon,

there is one window open

in this house—

drizzle and wind

bully and shoulder

their way through—

and after the ballyrag:

birds tattle on all

 who remain under the clouds:

your jaundiced face is stark

yellow.  We all wait

for a break in the weather.

It’s been days

since you plotted back, resolving

rain and my anxiety

of silence,

my incessant sky.

 You brood unseeable.  

Times like these

I imagine I’m the one

who needs

to reflect and conjure you

to the surface of my cup

of long whisked

silvery tea.

And if I sit beside the right

window—draw open

those  wet drapes—if I sit

and wait and compass

you between the suspension

 of rain,

maybe your mellow face

will float on the surface

and I can drink you

cold in a drop or two

of bee-cleaned nectar

of almond, tupelo,

any faint blossom—

nightshift hitched to the hips

when the refuge gets heavy

in the pause of water,

the stilling of the wind.

vapor

moon

is it you or the vapor,

the thin tissue of earth's

cornea, that allows it

and you

your demurity?

the more we see

the more we cannot?

curves and turns

we birl, constantly

unmoored, but can't feel

it

gravity

roots us, always...all ways.

do you remember when

you first came

undone?  Were you scooped,

as some wonder,

from the Pacific

in the first million

or so (but who really knows)

years of the earth's

turning?

I think we are too large 

to know

I think if we were

skinless

without bone--

we could finally be the contents

of our lungs:

star and earth and dust

of you--

we would whirl,

dervish-like and ascend

and not call it death

but rather coming, always coming

home.

the moon you could not find
is new
is under her umbra burka
of shadow

she sees you
i can guess

and while your gaze,
stead-
fast

to penetrate,
blushes her with prose

her words grind down
on the ice-glass turned flame
of the star

and spark with a pin
of light

I wrote a moon,
a near new moon,
the other day
while the door
opened wide
for my morning.
It turns out
I was on the wrong side
of the house,
looking
in the wrong sky
to find her.
She was not west
as she had been
all winter.
She'd shifted.
she'd gone
east.

And I was in a hurry.

And then, when
all was quiet once again
a day had gone by,
and another layer
of dark had shifted up
the face of her.

Her abaya of silk
is a gauzy shield
on too bright days.
Cool beneath it
she is renewing.

And moons
are patient.  You know,
somewhere,
perhaps not here,
but somewhere,

they are always full.
They never feel
neglected. 
Reflected, but never
neglected. And thus
forgiveness is
a song that, when it leaves
the throat of the bird
is transformed
in the ear of the one
who listens,
the one who,
once new again,
lets slip, a thread at a time
the abaya of dark
that is the edge
of the world.

saturday moon

moon—

in this light, on this sea

you are a fandango—

the wind twirls

your skirt

into my face

and stone castanets

click and part

click and part

if I walked into you

how long would it take

for you to teach me

all the moves

before we seem

seamless,

born to do this,

for this is

what is vivid!

in the rush and whoosh

of blood, what's withdrawn

is memory

sharp as the tip

of a needle

pushed into a vein

and that tip’s

narrow eye drawing

out liquid light

to be stored in glass vials

to be tested and sorted with

the speed of sound found

only in our centrifuge spin

(14 April 2012)