“cercare e saper riconoscere chi e cosa, in mezzo all'inferno, non è inferno, e farlo durare, e dargli spazio.” Italo Calvino, Le CiTTà INVISIBILi (1972)
“Logic is the Beginning of Wisdom, […] Not the End.” Spock, STAR TREK vi: The Undiscovered Country (1991)
7/9/2021 draft, pub Jan 13, 2025
this storm has shorn
flowers of their petals
naked hips and stamens
purple gold white
and yellow scattered
like dropped skirts
on white chalk-soil
this is the shape of rain
on a leaf lyric
and precise round
and reflective intimate
on the level of atoms
with every surface
of the heart of its lean
these are the spikes of thistles
in penitential violet
dandelions rain lilies
mullein with ears soft
and furred as a lamb’s
this is spring
and will be again
11/11/2024 drafted, posted January 9, 2025
I have never been able
to pretend for long
that love is anywhere
unspeaking to me
most theologies a little
too contained
for me to hear
with anything other
than half an ear
the other three quarters
of my listening
devoted to river spirits
bone rattles
and bluebells
who every spring
uproot themselves
to pierce the groves
of my blood a forest
of singing spirits
and humming prophets
retrieved from baskets
once thought empty
from their exile
among the rushes
10/26/2024 drafted, posted January 5, 2025
she visited my Latin class bare-armed
shoulders square and wide beneath
a blue singlet top brown hair burnished
and curled as if sun-bright bronze
she seemed impossible she spent summers
diving for barnacled jars once used for wine
oil or honey retrieved the upturned ends
of marble pillars left in the skeletal holds
of old shipwrecks something in her polished
and refined yet cleanly useful sharp
as a jeweled fibulae under strict
museum lights she told us she pulled
things once thought lost back into air
she showed us grainy footage of old gods
held in her gold arms as she skillfully
tucked straps and placed pulleys in order
to securely pull them back up toward
the shifting surface-lit Mediterranean
she kicked gracefully through curtains
of cautious silver fishes I thought of her
often after wishing I could follow her
down into that sea in my polyester uniform
shirt and khaki skirt twisted white knee socks
and scuffed saddle oxfords in a corner
I often pretended to read in order
to think of her without interruption
11/2/2024 draft, fin 12/31/2024
you keep all the knives ready
so I may choose my violence
carefully and not harm myself
as I control the slicing angle
of their soft and oiled gleaming
you take out the wasps
in your clear plastic cup covered
by thick paper as patiently
as if they were moths
you practice with your pistol
so your aim may be once
and unmistaken
when you take my face in your hands
your thick fingers hold my jaw
as if I were one of your orchids
perhaps the one you stole
from a neglected black plastic pot
in a lightless cafe bathroom
small lump tucked in your bag
like a secret until you could
in the big window
with the other rescues
give back its roots
to air its leaves
to the radiance of light
11/28/2024 draft, post Jan 1, 2025
my brown heart
anima amica mea
in the shelter
of remembered
magnolia trees
goblets of white
fragrance waiting
for pollinators
garlanded in gulf-fed
equatorial jasmine
you are the doorway
a piece of paper held up
to the pulse of sun
what is a halo
or shadow
but a way to know
what we displace
in the flow of the holy
illumination
has more to do
with faithful experiment
in the direction
of what might be
divinity—so simple!
but difficult until
familiarity makes
second nature
of this more nuanced
revelation of our first
secret from us only
until we grant
attention
its proper temple
my brown heart
anima amica mea
gold made from
earth where
I was buried
2/11/2024 draft, Jan 1, 2025 posted
your hair is a fleece set out
to divine the will of god
a gold labyrinth stamped
a fine-lined fingerprint
that ends at your navel
when I listen there
when I taste the salt
there is no snake or apple
only the heat of your body
as it holds itself patiently
against me a bare wall
unshaded in August
7/9/2021 draft, pub Jan 1, 2025
they strut across tea towels
and kitchen cabinets plates
and prints these cocks scream
in primary colors to greet
morning’s last star they crow
to wake up the crowd strut
in their spurs effortlessly butch
to scratch the door of dawn
little brown and white hen
in striped pajamas femme
occasionally knightly I admire
the way they own the yard
sharp-eyed and dapper-feathered
particolored Pompadours
in every claw fierce as their
giant ancestral dinosaurs
11/6/2024
I do not know why
I wanted to be stone
elegantly draped
in garments not entirely clothes
something to behold
without the burden of being
expected to reply
to whatever questions
the adults had for me
about school or church—boring!
I liked dirt and bugs and swords
and silver dresses I liked
people who did not ask questions
happy to hold with me the shape
of an imaginary girl
always pouring water
or arms uplifted into air
as if it might gust us off forever
who would stand with me
in imitation of a boy
holding a sheaf of wheat
an embodiment of autumn
or crouch with me to pick
a thorn from a lion’s tender foot
but my favorite figure
by far was the stained
concrete angel
I liked to look at
with thin freckled arms
crossed over my chest
as if we were silent
slightly asymmetrical mirrors
I in my blue pinafore
and white lace bobby socks
stuck into dirty white
sandals content to be likewise
quietly contemplated
by this being made
in the image of a message
from a bigger being
I was told created everything
an image directly from the source
of all the love
I wished I could
free myself to be
11/6/2024
of the stories shared
at your memorial service
your friend from middle school
told my favorite
she described how you often
held the door open
for those who walked
down the hall behind you
it didn’t matter
what they were carrying
or who they were
if they were far away
or close you waited
patiently for them to arrive
chatting fidgeting
casually leaning against
the bright frame
of her story braced
against the heavy metal
of the doorway
I recognize you immediately
you never could be quiet for long nor
did you ever take from someone
the power of carrying what they chose
to carry you never resented
opening the way and waiting
it has always been like you
to allow us the dignity of pretending
we are the ones doing you a favor
listening to your stories
laughing together
as you quietly make sure
as you did even way back then
that the walk to get wherever
the door at the end
of the hallway leads
is never lonely
11/6/2024
even when you could no longer eat
you told me you dreamed of hot dogs
and demon-haunted planets
valkyries and donuts
that you saw Gabriel once
dressed in purple
on a long cold walk
on Thanksgiving night in Central Park
and later still told me silently
through layers of morphine
that life is worth keeping
even when it hides itself in aching
or shines only dimly through semi-sheer
layers of institutional polyester
curtains like moonlight
for you this earth was always flame
you told me the last time I saw you
as you casually emptied
your colostomy bag on the other side
of the bathroom door that a flock of cranes
once surrounded you
on the roof you climbed
onto illegally from the balcony
of your apartment
early one fall in Denver
in order to look at the sun
as it set directly
their wings like yours
sudden and deafening
composed on my birthday, Spring 2024
Not where there are dragons
veils of positive or negative
existence or even outer layers
of our holding atmosphere
for even stars almost
unimaginably distant
are contiguous with the breath
of a dandelion the peaches
that ripen like golden apples
in the lap of summer
what is neither
to be separate nor the same
is simply to be related
blood and dark matter
hidden in the skin of light
this reflective surface
that has us so convinced
we might hop toward
what we most want
and never reach it
meanwhile our atoms
like swans never fail
to remember every being
we have twined
through water
and through sky with
in search of a truth
that never arrives
only because we could
not be here without it
I.
I must go now down
to the cold realm the moss realm
the earth realm where our spines
are inexorably disassembled
by the knobby patience of roots
there is no glow there
but nevertheless every solstice
the room fills like an empty cup
with the memory of light
II.
you are wise sister carrion
to have so surrendered
yourself to the hunger
of those who outlast you
III.
I will walk you hand in hand
wearing your good shoes
to the throne made
of golden shadow
when I return up-ground
I will light for you a daffodil
bright as a vigil candle
IV.
look at the wet stone
like ripples the play of the chisel
the frogs croak by the small pond
the tail of the wren flicks like a switch
her whistle by turns
amorous and mournful
V.
though I called
the raven did not visit
Spanish moss like furry caterpillars
crawls all along the branching elm
the mourning dove as always
is louder than expected
where she roosts in the old old oak
another year has decided
to unwind itself
may I keep pace enough
to weave myself
a blanket of the clouds
I have been dipped
in the well of wyrd
I am as if half-made
of glass transparent
to the new news of fate
that fills me gold
and silver and wild
there was a stag once
not in a forest but an open field
we looked at each other
in late June by the absent water
equally startled I could not
make myself more quiet
the blueberries are crowned
matte and slick
as the beading surface
of an ink bottle
I must hold them gently
when I gather them
from their clear cage
cold in artificial winter
for Michael
one day you will go
how I do not know
meanwhile I wake
I dream I breathe
I sleep you
beside me
and every poem
is this poem
my father’s death is a secret
hidden in his bones for sixty years
but it now day by day reveals itself
there are signs
whether or not I choose
to read them when it comes
it will be no surprise but entirely
unexpected a hurt so deep
it reminds me of what I must forget
in order to wake up
there are steps I thought
I understood impermanence
but my father’s bones like scrolls
unroll themselves
and set me a test:
what will you do
when you no longer have
someone to call you precious?
sometimes he says
we all need
to be set back to zero
for Michael
on the eve of spring
we heard a lone lamb weep
in the middle of the front field
where two thorn trees stand
she had no mother and no father
I held the dog while you jumped the fence
and walked across the dust eaten stabs
of what had once been grass
she did not run
in your arms she was smaller
than our small black cat
you carried her toward me
her heart a hummingbird
she did not cry but warmed herself
against you while with my fingers
I said as her umbilical cord
wrote itself into the air
thank you for your life
now live it and you carried her
back to where the mothers
with swollen udders gathered
in the low dip between the hills
asking for food for water
feather is a verb
talking to itself about flight
kiss is a noun with two people
hidden inside
train is a repetitive motion
in a single direction
that gathers or loses momentum
empty is a way
to say our impermanence
in no way impedes
our luminosity
poetry is what happens
when I stop pretending
earth is what I grip
when your wings
remember themselves
recollection is
the more contemplative cousin
of regret a star is
anywhere I could point
gravity is how we know
what we fall toward
has always been
rising to meet us
it is not love
that makes me blind
only that when with you
I see so differently
I do not recognize myself
as seeing but decide
it must be some other
sense has filled
me with such excess
of light that even
the green hills
where kings are buried
unfold themselves
like flowers caught
in a waking silver tide