I hope not
After all the sunrises,
poetry readings,
and so on,
you and I will remain
you. and me.
Shall I remove the blindfold of ambiguity?
In the foreground,
the moon waxes yellow, saying
Look!
Your great head like the sun
is rising above the horizon.
This is a little bit of diversion.
Describe the head.
you write.
Its Germanic,
broad,
with a nose too short,
lips too full,
and blue eyes that,
yes,
radiate.
I am talking about the sun here, you realize.
This is a little bit of distraction.
Think about this next time you put on sun screen:
The rays of the sun are black coarse beams
shot with silver spines.
Yes.
It's you.
Try to count backwards from 157.
You say
What am I doing?
I wish I could unremember
all the details of you.
Then writing unremember
would no longer be an attempt
to distract you
from all that I've said
from all that I don't want to say.
Just Right
We are walking
across the beach's broad forehead looking
I at the sound,
you at the sky.
The angle of the sun,
to our paced-off world,
is just right this time of year,
you say,
look at the sky,
it redefines blue.
But I am looking
at the water
and you,
face unfolding,
mouth soft,
and eyes
blue.
Love is a Fool Star
All italicized words are quoted from "Offering and Rebuttal" by Carl Sandburg
Today the steam is rising over the pier.
I am standing inside it
while it rushes over my clothes and hair,
and because I cannot hold it,
I say your name,
hoping to forget it.
You and a ring of stars
can mention my name and forget me.
Knowing you is like drifting
into a field of lily pads,
my whole world becomes
a wash of green on blue.
So I cast my memories
of idiosyncratic
you,
onto the tangled green
into the blue.
Offering
I drempt that you laid
your head in my lap
and I traced every grey hair with my pen,
inscribing stanzas of Yeats
on every silver thread.
Your closed eyes could see no less
than if you saw me there,
my legs cradling your head,
your body motionless in sleep,
my hands entangled in your hair,
your soul wound about the stars.
I felt every breath
that escaped from your parted lips,
the warm air that rushed to the tips
of my fingers writing poetry in your hair.
But knowing
that you had yet to understand
that you lay asleep
with only grey in your hair
I chose to remain silent
unless you awoke.
Rebuttal
When I awoke
my feet were asleep.
Your head must weigh
about ten pounds.
Given the average brain weight
of three-and-a-half pounds
this amounts to one thing:
I always knew you had a thick skull.
Also, the eyestrain of writing
microscopic verse
gave me a migraine.
Yes,
thats how many grey hairs you have:
enough to keep me writing
eight hours straight.
And that one star
that you in passing,
wound your soul about
the one that shimmered
as you drifted by
that was my love.
Shoots the Moon
There was a narrow man
who didn't like neologisms
who thought that I was too pretentious.
He said
I'm number one
but really he just looked like a 1.
He lost sometimes
but most of the time
he was a real winner.
Sometimes he won
the hearts of
narrow women
who probably also did not like neologisms
who probably thought that I was preposterous.
I am.
So what?
This narrow man
had a saying
for when he won.
He'd say
I'm the smartest man
in the world.
Which is not saying much
if you ask me.
When I lose
I say
Yay me.
I'm saying it now.
Sky Stone
Proverbially I am the one winged bird
without the malcontent, but rather
wistful and eccentric, that is to say,
the circular movement of bodies driven by intrinsic force.
I have watched you,
pigeon toed on one side,
circling in a clockwise direction,
like a boat with a stuck rudder,
not fish and not quite bird.
You circle above my thoughts
like the sun, a sky stone
orbiting a vast track
of rotations and ellipses
that are the gears of time.
I would like to burn across your atmosphere,
a meteorite pulled into your gravity,
a fire in your sky.
