It Will Happen
On a Wednesday
it will happen
and when I die
I will be young again
I will have horn concertos
and offer my bones
to the herring merchant.
When all rise
in their coffins
to greet me
I will dance
on branches of palm
tracing the shadows
of my unborn cousins.
And I will sing aloud
to the clouds and waves
that I am free
to hold them in my arms
that Joan Kimball is dead
and no machine can bind her
and no medicine can drown her.
____________________________
pub. 2010 in Comstock Review
Prescience
In the far-deep low-dark time
of the now-full how-tell past
did you sense
what would happen?
Did you somehow know
it would be like this?
It isn't a surprise
is it?
______________________
pub.
2007 in Spare Change News
Caught
Dust motes
pirouette on a spot-lit stage
spin within this newborn ray
which left the sun
eight minutes ago
to penetrate my wavy pane of glass
which keeps a blower’s breath
in a hundred year-old
bubble of melted sand
upon which
two hundred million years ago
dinosaurs trod
Potter
Her son
acquires a wheel
throws his own bowl
plays his own theme
throws his own bowl
plays his own theme
with spoons on
its rim.
She attends
when he floats odd
when he floats odd
ribbons of
greeting.
The clouds in her sky
race only for her.
She knuckles memory
into a bowl
fires and glazes it
fires and glazes it
plays her own
tune.
At night when earth turns
past day's blue shimmer
past day's blue shimmer
they watch
the same stars.
________________________
An earlier version, called
"Son,"
pub. 2006 in Perihelion.
Revelation
He tried to show
her
the who he thought he was
she tried to tell
him
the what she thought she needed
she sensed the promise of his hand on her arm
the stroke, a papery tassel
she sighed for a hearty caress
she shaped his words to slake her urgencies
read his accents in her ear bone
culled the man from her iris
carried everywhere his effigy
a painted cardboard pose
what was he truly
once her needs had reinvented
him
they cried when they uncovered their forgeries
they wept for what never
was
_________________________________
Earlier version pub. 2003 in The
Listening Eye
No comments:
Post a Comment