A half-dressed man once pointed his gun
At me from an upper floor window
In the street: “Hey, kid, want some fun!”
He laughed. For a moment I didn’t know
Who I was — not until he disappeared.
Nothing had happened, something feared,
Because the child’s world I knew
Had never been so wrenched askew.
Even so, I ran home, my lungs bursting,
Shouting with joy — no, then cursing,
Crying, tears stinging, feeling shame
For which I’ve never found a name.
( )
( )
I took a photo seven times —
A thick grove of dark spindly trees
Backed by a bright December sun —
And a small turquoise dot shines
In each — the camera lens sees
Images where I think are none.
I continued my walk by a pond,
Looking for mink and waterfowl.
Hawks circled each other beyond,
Their screeches in the wind a howl.
From deep hoof prints I knew a deer
Had trod this path, now nowhere near.
I stared at the sun — a blinked tear
Painted the trees with a blue smear.
There is so little that is right here,
I might suspect there’s nothing more.
Everything grows within the sphere
Of my eye — ocean crashing shore.
What’s far is near, what’s then is now,
Eating a pear is taking a vow.
Can I leave it at that, the I
Looking through the window at trees,
And nail thunderclouds to the sky
With a hundred thousand me’s?
Ego was never so rewarded
Choosing to lose what it’s hoarded.
Some say there is nothing beyond,
Ignoring our interstitial bond.
One hundred and one years ago
He diagnosed our vertigo.
His scalpel cut beneath the skin
And removed original sin.
He held it in his palsied hands —
The nothing he left on Margate Sands.
It’s only gotten worse since then —
The commandments are ten times ten.
Dust is fear and the unreal real.
Now it’s not what you think, but feel.
A cacophony of voices
Warns us to forget all choices.
As night falls a whimpered prayer
Leaves the nervous chanting sayer.
The faintest chitter of leaves in the Fall,
The slant auroras beneath the branches,
The blue-gray clouds that are not clouds at all,
But cloudless sky the fading light blanches,
The warmth and the chill I feel on my cheeks
As sunned and unsunned breezes alternate,
Each gust not finding what the other seeks,
And not one beast reaching out to a mate.
Today I walk this ordered avenue
Until the moon tops the furthest poplar.
It's so bright I can't see a single star,
A Milky Way I cannot know, but knew.
I reach home as the shadows slip away.
Only the moon's been moved enough to stay.
There’s no edge to the pine forest.
We’re always within and without.
It’s neither a question nor test,
Because there’s no room here for doubt.
Its mixed scents purify the air
And its shades rarify the light.
I decide to touch each column,
Which soon urges me toward despair,
As though mine is a hand of blight
That renders the living bark numb.
Without navigable details,
One can get lost in woods — not these,
Whose needled floors delimit trails
Some, not all, follow with ease.
They pierce a clear blue sky
And tear it to tatters.
Blind or with open eyes,
If I know what matters,
I can thrust my fingers
In and leave blood and flesh.
Yet starlings can linger,
Safe in its lethal mesh.
The question is why thorns?
They can protect a rose.
The bull charges its horns.
But why such a tree grows
Long and fearsome spindles
Pierces us with symbols.
A dreamed-of tern feathered bright tin,
With feet of forks and spoons, and eyes
Of rapidly blinking buttons
Flapping in a nacreous sky . . .
So briefly, yet half-remembered.
Is it different than sand hill cranes
Flying tight skeins, or tiny birds
Fighting at your feeder, insane,
Almost: hungry, or is it greed?
All is constructed by what feeds
The integers of counting we’s,
Assembled — one, one — instantly,
As we try to comprehend dreams —
And all else— as more than just seen.
How many remember so much?
I’ve read for some it’s a burden,
That not a thought or word or touch
Is lost, faded or uncertain.
All comes back clear and unbidden,
A constant stream of images
It is prayed might remain hidden.
No, such a past never ages.
The old yew tree in my back yard,
Subsiding, has dug a sinkhole,
Its roots drawing earth to branches.
I fill it in with sand —it’s hard—
I don’t want to choke the tree’s bole
Just to slow small avalanches.
Like the tops of skulls —
as my shadow would have said —
don’t you dare eat them!
Two, together, kiss —
a third is all by itself —
a jealous lover!
There’s so much I don’t want to know
As I look beyond the Milky Way.
Black holes are the eyes of a crow,
Unblinking, thinking an idee
Fixe: “I see therefore I am an eye.”
What happens to what eyes swallow?
(I don’t want to know, or do I?)
I can’t see a Nothing beyond
The event horizon, but a wand
Beheld by the eye of my hand
Blindly writing an & —
Or, glass orbs with just one side
Tinted with silver iodide:
There, where crows’ ideas reside.
We can’t tell anyone to know,
Don’t even know what knowing is,
Where it comes from, its genesis.
Things we know just come and go.
We can’t force anything to stay,
Especially anything we say.
Everything we know is “as though,”
A nothing become contingent,
Mindlessly intelligent.
There’s no bird smarter than a crow,
Or so it’s said by learned men,
Who can count from one to ten,
But find it hard to explain how
Crows never fly in a straight line.
As if seeking some strict design,
We fly from not wanting to know.
Filthy man! He calls himself Artist!
We pay him a fat lawyer's fee
for his talent at offending me.
Those black eyes see naked flesh
where others see slips or camisoles.
He grins privately, licks his mustache,
strikes me in profile when my nose
is my least attractive feature,
and poses my bust straight ahead.
He's painting my blush, isn't he,
to set the whole world gossiping,
when I wouldn't let him touch me
with his brush! My husband hired
him, as usual, without a resume
or interview. I asked if he'd seen
a sample. "One, my dear," he said,
"which approximates our nephew's head."
My revenge had been this gown,
as expensive as it is décolleté,
and I suppose I dreamed a painter
to be schooled in professional behavior,
like my hairdresser and physicians,
to be marble-cool near bare shoulders-
but those eyes are blind to elegance
and see in sophistication only sex.
He flickers like black flame licking
the canvas with daubs of paint to show
that he's so serious in his art;
a wink and he'd be at me like a shark.
My neck! This portrait is overdue.
Aren't voyeurs prone to exhaustion too?
God would have had to think again
had he spent not seven days, but ten.
And when it's done, what will he have
made of me? Will I look exactly
as I am, well or badly drawn, my
beauty replaced by oily paint
or psychologically portrayed-
the face of hunger or deceit?
Will he trap each hair and mole, each
blemish like weird species in a zoo?
I'd be happier looming through a screen,
through a window dripping in the rain.
I should listen to my little sister
and have it done quickly by photographer.
Yes? Fine. So. He says it's finished
and invites me to look. A threat.
Let's see if it has been worth it.
My word! I'm so . . . do I seem so
to him? Yes, he's made a mistake
with my bosom, but my chin-
I hadn't thought the line that clean.
He teaches me to appreciate my nose.
My hair glows, darkness with a sheen.
My skin, alabaster everywhere, except
my ears, which do, I know, go red at
the least distress; my lips never
spoke such thoughts in mirrors; a kiss
from them I'd be wanton to bestow.
He's cut a heart out of my dress;
from waist to breast, the black cloth
flares and makes my shape a gift
to the admirer, while much else is left
undraped. Certainly the neck
is false, too long, too muscular.
Perhaps it's all the pose he gave me.
My husband will conclude he raped me.
I was wrong and I will tell him.
Oh, he's gone! I didn't see him go!