Past Mogollon River
the limestone
ruins
scrape it with your finger
and the floor breaks
The talc
must have dusted
their dark
bodies as they squatted on these
floors grinding
mesquite and creosote
No one knows
where they went
from the cliffs
with their
earth jars and sandals
Or if they
cursed the
desert moon
as they wrapped
their dead
babies
in bright cloth
and jewels
2
Now cliff swallows
nest in the mud
where the Sinaqua
lived
until water ran out
High in these white cliffs
weaving yucca and cotton
How many nights did they listen
for cougar
as they pressed the wet
rust clay
into bowls
they walked
200 miles to trade in Phoenix
before it was time to
leave
40 years
before Columbus
3
Noon in the
caves
it is summer
the
children are sleeping
The women
listen to a story
one of them has heard
of an ocean
Deerflesh dries in the sun
they braid
willow stems
and don’t look up
When she
is done
they are all
stoned on what could come
from such water
It is cool and dark
inside here
This was the place
4
The others
have gone to find
salt and red
stones for earrings
The children
climb down
To look for lizards
and nuts he
takes the girl he
wants
for the first time
Her blood cakes
on the white chalk
floor
Her thighs
will make a bracelet
in his head
5
Desert bees
fall thru the wind
over the pueblos
velvet ash and barberry
They still find
bodies
buried in the wall
a child’s bones
wrapped in yucca leaves
and cotton
bats fly thru the
ruins now
scrape the charred
walls white
The people left
the debris of their lives here
arrows, dung
And were buried
with the bright
turquoise they loved
sometimes carved
into animals and birds
Champlain, Branbury, the Lakes at
Night
always women in the
dark on porches talking
as if in blackness their
secrets would be safe.
Cigarettes glowed like
Indian paintbrush.
Water slapped the
deck. Night flowers
full of things with wings,
something you almost
feel like the fingers
of a boy moving, as if
by accident, under
sheer nylon and felt
in the dark movie house
as the chase gets louder,
there and not there,
something miscarried
that maybe never was.
The mothers whispered
about a knife, blood.
Then, they were laughing
the way you sail out of
a dark movie theater
into wild light as if no
thing that happened
happened
New
Hampshire
wild cat in
the
wood pile, deer
you can’t see.
I drift with
the poem you
sent into an
underground
river where
Indians eat
fish so old
they have no
eyes. If I
shut my eyes
I hear the
water that
flows under
the columbine.
When I touch
the chair I hear
bluebirds that
were wild in its
leaves when there
were red flowers
in its branches
Middlebury Poem
Milky summer
nights,
the men stay waiting, First National Corner
where the traffic light used to be, wait
as they have all June evenings of their lives.
Lilac moss and lily of the valley
sprout in the cooling air as
Miss Damon, never later for thirty years,
hurries to unlock the library, still
hoping for a sudden man to spring tall from the
locked dark of mysterious card catalogues to
come brightening her long dusty shelves.
And halfway to dark
boys with vacation bicycles
whistle flat stones over the bridge,
longing for secret places where
rocks are blossoming girls with damp thighs.
Then nine o’clock falls thick on lonely books
and all the unclaimed fingers and
as men move home through bluemetal light,
the Congregational Church bells
ringing as always four minutes late,
the first hayload of summer rumbles through
town and all the people shut their eyes
dreaming a wish
Thirty
Miles West of Chicago
paint chips
slowly.
It’s so still you
can almost hear it
pull from a porch.
Cold grass claws
like fingers in a
wolf moon. A man
stands in corn bristles
listening, watching
as if something
could grow from
putting a dead child
in the ground
Things that
Shine in Quebec City as the Sun Falls
light on the
ball
of glass, on
the puddles
under the Hilton.
The St Lawrence glows,
the flag poles,
edges of buildings.
A yellow car in the
salmon light.
Lights are starting to go on.
Green copper roofs glow,
shadows of clouds
over sailboats
on the water.
The smell of leaves,
cool wind blowing.
The water
a ripple of light
like a flag of glass.
Diamond ripples.
I think of Diamond Head,
light that seemed
magical in a strange
town. The only
familiar sign is
one that says
Kresge’s. Light
that will glow
when what
seems to
might not.
Green diamonds,
red diamonds,
blue diamonds
starting to cover
the hill
Midwest
all that sky
a flat black
with only a cat’s
eyes blazing
people wait alone.
Wind changes in
the corn leaves.
People hear it like
a chord augmented.
Houses chip slowly
stranded in snow.
Only the sky is fast
Monet's Les
Nympheas
the long
curved
room, the walls
starting to
shimmer, breathe
A Chinese girl
sitting on the stone
bench next to me,
dazed, smiling
The lilies moving
into both of us
Violet
Jelly
picking the
leaves
Monday early in
a cool rain huddled
in wet sweatshirts.
Hours in the grey,
knees and fingers
numb. Our skin
smells of violets
while they soak
in the red pan
overnight till we
boil the green.
Then the pectin
turns them lilac.
We pour them into
glass, amethyst
the sun comes thru
on the window
after snow
Blue Sleighs
December, the
water moves
dark between the
snow dunes in ten
thousand hills
pulling light
around the
black stones, a
sound to sleep
and love by
like bells
running thru the
children’s sleep
when they dream
of blue sleighs
September 26,
1996
this morning the pond
looks like marble. Rose
and charcoal dissolving
to dove, to guava, rouge.
Only mallards pushing
holes in the glass, so
unlike the pond, deep in
trees, almost camouflaged,
startling as coming upon
your reflection in a mirror,
just there under trees and
the wooden bar and the
driftwood benches blackly
jade with pines dripping
into it, shadows close to
my hair. What I didn’t have
blinded me so I hardly saw
the small birds, blue,
pulling out of moss and
needles as if reaching into
the dark for their color
Mid
November
when the black ducks come,
winter opens, a kick pleat in darkness
Eyelash fringe of ferns on shore.
Late fall thunder after a long
Indian summer.
Branches creak. Muskrat slither into
the pond like a stone the tide covers
in the glow of a stranger’s flashlight
Late
November
one minute, the
sun was out, it was fall.
Geraniums under a quilt last night, a
blotch of red opening.
On the front step what looked like lint
has small pink claws and feet.
Next the sky was the color of lead.
Geraniums under a quilt last night
like a child you’ve tucked in
or a body wrapped in the earth under leaves.
In the swirl of sudden snow, what
was left of the headless fur blows west
Like a child you’ve tucked in
whatever was living, a just born
squirrel I suppose, hardly a living thing
except for feet.
In fifteen minutes, the light came
back, cars stopped sliding
Whatever was living. Or just born
must have felt the wild snow was a warning.
I thought of the lover wrapped in dark
cloth and left in the leaves while, not knowing,
I took a ballet class. The geraniums
are still under a blue quilt this Tuesday.
One minute the sun was out, it was fall
Geese at
Midnight
as if a
feather
quilt exploded,
a white you can’t
see in the dark
but breathe, a
wind of white
rose petals,
wave of fog
in the shape of
flying things.
Like radio
voices on
the pillow,
lulling, keeping
what’s ragged
and tears at
bay, the geese
pull sky and stars
in through glass,
are like arms
coming back
as sound
Like a Dark
Lantern
I move thru
the first
floor at 3 AM, past
the cat who is curled
in a chair half made
of her fur, turning
her back on air
conditioning, startled
to find me prowling
in the dark as if I was
intruding on stars and
moon and the ripple
in water that spits
back the plum trees.
Grass smells grassier.
The clock inches slowly
toward the light. A
creak of wood and the
soft scratch on the blue
Persian rug the cat claws
gently merge with some
night bird I’ve never
seen like a poem that
goes along and suddenly,
at the end, like a banked
fire, explodes into the
wildest flame that finishes
off everything that has
come before it perfectly
In the
Rippled Ebony Cove
Temperatures
falling.
Moon slivers on the
rolling skin of water.
Geese in half light,
armada of feathers.
Wind blows them closer.
One silver band glows.
Their onyx, black flame
in a night fire
Late
November
Today in Virginia,
unseasonably cold,
high only in the mid 30’s.
I think of a night drive from Austerlitz
an hour north to bring in my plants, early September.
The sky tangerine, guava and teal.
My own house strangely quiet, my
cat at my mother’s.
When I think of a night I drove from Austerlitz
to bring in the plants, my mother young enough
to swoop up suitcases, my cat,
I was looking for someone. “Aren’t you glad you
still have me?” my mother purred. The cat I
got after that one, now going on 21,
the ice yesterday a warning.
I was looking for someone. Each time I
left my mother’s rooms, drove thru
Vermont leaves there was an ache becoming myself.
When the wind tore thru yesterday, on the stairs, a
shape that looked like lint with claws.
Later I tucked the geraniums in quilts
like putting a child under flannel or leaves
That ache, a wind under my hair
My mother tucked in the earth.
The headless fur shape with its pink claws
or feet, on its back, a mystery.
Today in Virginia, unseasonably cold
Heron on Ice
Pale salmon
light,
9 degrees. Floor
tiles icy. Past
branches the
beaver’s gnawed,
at the small hole
the heron waits,
deep in the water.
Sky goes apricot,
tangerine, rose.
Suddenly a dive,
then the heron
with sun squirming
in his mouth, a
carp that looks a
third as big as he
is gulped, then
swallowed, orange
glittering wildly
like a flag or the
wave of someone
drowning
Feeding
Ducks, Grey November
no swath of
light,
no smell of warm
wood shavings. A
rain-coming scent.
Last leaf in wind.
Walnuts on the deck
bleeding ebony. I
think of houses of
ice where there is
no light, of men
carving snow birds,
seals, caribou,
dream llamas as geese
fly up, a cloud of
feathers skidding to
the corn that floats
on the skin of water
the color of night
Geese on Ice
frozen,
perched as
if listening for some
distant code,
news of a warm
front coming in
time. Meanwhile,
alerts go out on
local stations,
schools close
early. The “partly
sunny” never came.
30 percent chance
of snow. Trees tilt
east, the ground
hardens. Geese
take root as scarves
float in wind like
strange new flags
On the
Shortest Day of the Year
A woman went
into darkness,
past the black ruby roses
and was never heard from again.
She moved quietly past
bleached grass a December day
it moved into sixties near Troy.
It was foggy and warm, very
much like today. It could have
been today. You probably think
this woman was me, it seems
there are reasons. But listen
I’ve never seen, only imagine
those tissue thin roses and
that last minute before light
collapses. A garnet leaf
on the pond is less red than
my hair blazing, the lone
signal to guide you in
Downstairs the Dark Studded
with glow of
white branches,
clots of snow,
stars in clumps,
you have to bury
your face in
white. In
Syracuse, off
Comstock, the
lilacs just
starting, the
first man who
touched me
inside my
clothes pulled
me under such
white boughs
thru rain dripping.
Lacy boughs, light
filling the
dark orchard.
In this same
jeweled light
everything
opening like
these clenched buds
Cherry
Blossoms in Darkness
glow like
stars of lace,
heavy snow
clotting on boughs.
I couldn’t sleep,
the sweet white
floating up
stairs pulled me
back to the
cove of an
old lover’s
arms deep in
such white
dripping branches,
white petals
on slopes of
skin, lips
studding Tuesday
with jewels
in the sweet
grass, locked
like antlers
Reprieve
for the
moment, my
cat, who turned her head
at chunks of just
cut beef, now is nuzzling
nearly empty cat food
tins, purrs thru the
night. Limp as rags,
for a week under the
bed, she claws the
rug in the sun. I say
nothing, just listen
as I do to her crunching
food, lapping water
at 2 AM. In stillness
the sound comforts
like bells or words in
Spanish or French
I don’t understand. Her
chewing, like pearls
or amber warming to
skin soothes though it
is as untranslatable
to me as the nuances
under chatter in
the streets in Montreal
or Paris. Still, for
the moment, like music
or velvet, her paws on my
eyelids are a reprieve,
like June, or roses
or lilacs in early light
before anything scorches,
goes limp or loses
its rouge, while morning
glories are a necklace
of amethyst, exotic as
gracias, si, bon, merci
It Goes on
like
dreaming of
some place after
you leave it. You
wake up in a daze
rain all day
in the pines.
It goes on
like that green,
like stained glass
between a bedroom
and the hall with
the light always
burning behind it,
cantaloupe and
peach light on
the bed all night
