We live where light and rust
Mount in measured layers
Like lovers without lust,
Or gods without prayers.
Who invented the bridge,
That fluvial sacrilege,
Or endless skyscrapers
Assailed by old newspapers?
They can’t blot out the sky
Or dry up the rivers —
Just twist the eye awry
Till the brainstem quivers.
Throw light on slabs of glass
And vertigoes will pass.
A critic said what poets write about
Is rubbish, it’s how they write that matters —
And that no one can write well about love.
The nonsense of a literary tout,
Who delights in poetry he shatters
With a crippling whip in a satin glove.
I don’t remember our first kiss, the kite
She’d made was loose and sailing out of sight.
It was probably then, on our first date,
When the only thing to do was to wait
For the kite’s return, like a falcon called —
Embracing, we felt tongues and lips scald.
The moisture and heat since then are the same,
Without diminution, beyond a name.
The vagaries of thought,
Less what is than is not,
Impossible windows,
Into, out, no wind blows,
And no light pierces lights,
But open gates of nights
Where, like a crystal jar,
Spins only one bright star
Placing all in its place
In emptiness of space,
(I am a meadowlark —
I don’t sing in the dark),
Where all’s in good order
Outside my own border.
It’s too soon to write about it.
I prefer Spinoza’s spirit,
Its embodiment of rainbows,
No holier than house sparrows.
It’s all perhaps a point of view,
Nothing is preternatural,
Just perpetually new,
A pride before there is no fall.
I stand inside an open door.
Indirect sunlight suffuses
The hallway with its sweet odor —
Even motes of dust have uses.
Outside a statue of mother
Asks, “Are you you, or some other?”
for Jeffrey Strayer
Extreme effort to frame:
What’s seen with or without
Enclosure takes the same
Circumambient route
Into the dark pupil.
Mountains and valleys spill
Beyond the circle’s span,
From rainclouds to brainpan.
They say it’s a hard climb
To reach the stone circle,
Yet, everywhere I’m
Found, the same miracle
Completes figure and ground:
A nearly perfect round.
Near Canaveral the eagles’ nest
Was built years before the sycamore died.
They still return to it each year to rest,
To rebuild, to mate, to give birth, to guide
Their fledglings in the raptor’s arts of flight
And fishing on the wing — claws clutched tight
On a meal devoured in a single bite.
When the rockets go up and out of sight
Is their world momentarily destroyed
By shuddering air and splintering light,
Or are they only mildly annoyed?
It takes five years for eagles to mature.
Each abandons its parents first, unsure,
Alone, wary of rockets and the future.
The slant light at sunset
Parses brick and shadow
As if they’d never met,
As if they didn’t know
They are one and the same,
Congeries with one name.
That name is fire, and fire.
The bridge rises higher
To suspend fire and wire,
Reaching from sand to mire.
So old the paint and brick,
Cooling the shadow’s wick.
All these make sun insane,
Absent mist, fog, or rain.
