4074

 

4073

 

4072

 4072

So few and less, then one

Ladybug is on the moon,

Our ceiling.

This last utopian

Who once like a rising rain,

With his flickering myriads,

Made the earth a sky

From which clipped petals fell,

Now surveys his whole life's portion,

An unfellowed expanse.

4071

 

4070

4070

On a different page of hours

This grief ran like a surf

Outvoiced by its motive sea:

A slight limb and ear and blank eye

Was bid, this outlarged smallest absence,

Silent

By the horizen-touching sorrow beyond.

4069

 

4068

 

4067

 4067

We fugitive spirits

We midsummer's night's dream--

We venlafaxine, we Bottom,

We valium, we Puck--

We one moment stopping

We next moment stuck.

4066

 

4065

 4065

The trick of normalcy

Carried a canvas to a field

Then conjured on a blank

A madonna of conciliation

Who anneals with a glance;

She sighed for your unpacked sorrow

Your sleight of hand that hid

What must out--

In the parlors and pubs,

As a man against the wall--

What might be the first sunflower,

The first night sky.

4064

 

4063

 4063

The time twixt branch and branch

That briefs you

Longs me like a winter shadow;

That clips space with a wing

New weighs my plot of earth.

And I'm lost to tell the sparrow

How his week is passed by my hour.

4062

 

4061

 4061

In my grandmother's house

Love-in-idleness

Will be her words unheard

Whose voice was sensibility;

Will be murmurs without

Her florescent sanctuary

That hold a scent of grace

In present memory.

A neon halo stayed her head

To be wove in recollection

Too, such wonders, Coca-Cola,

Fixed, a constellation breathing.

4060

 

4059

 

4058

 

4057

4057

The abstraction of the garden

Skips to the kitchen sill

Siren-summoned,

Recapitulating yellows

Grove greens, then threads of sand

As interstitial flags

In the stones to the sea.

Magnolia and cobalt petalled

Fans of forget-me-nots

Alternate blades of steel and glass.

Cape jasmine, made light,

Reflects veins of fire

On the beams and crossed wood.

Ocean violet tempera

Washes like troubled sleep

From the shore to the rippled walls.

Rosemary, for remembrance,

Unsifted by her weeks and years,

Turns the room of the world

Into this one; the first moment,

The last one.

 

4056

 4056

A fiddle with the procedure

Leaves ladies-in-waiting wilting

Through unstudied hours;

Schedules the undiscovered

For present complacence;

Topples cathedral towers

In a faithful flaw;

Warps the fabric of a bespoke

Conception, scored just so.

4055

 

4054

4054

The cat as talisman:

Flower but no flower,

He endures reflection;

The narcissi are clawed in peace.

.

Shield from expectation:

His eye is native to his heart

And blind to the beating hour;

His what's to be is past.

.

Exemplar of indifference

This atemporal beast;

In his mirrored soul a tower

To shadow any care.

4053

 

4052

4052

Having the sky and needing it too

Like a sailor lost at sea

'Customed to horizons

But not eternity;

.

That sets his sheet by compulsion

Aslant the wanted point

To leave ajoint the misconception

Of reflection in a glass.

4051

 

4050

 4050

Nature's imp, a fragility

Lights my sleep's hid conceits

Like a noon at midnight;

A bedded thought to block the sun,

And a shadow to touch my arm:

This long day's day is done.

4049