I dreamed Lanfrey or
I invented his face or
His real voice brushed my ear
I cannot remember or
I never knew
But all roads led him to me
And then snatched him
Gone
And I
I was
Alone
Howling grief
Then searching
Piecing him from
The eyes of one
The smiles of another
Creating him anew
But no Lanfrey
Dreamt or written or real
Could ever stay
My life I searched
For what could only slip away
I stopped at last
Too tired
Nothing I could do
Now it is habit
Searching
Cursing absence
But a habit I will break
Because
My heart has told me
Long after the asking:
He is here
And so am I
He is not who I thought
But neither am I
He tells me to sing,
But I do not sing.
He commands me to sing.
Sing of what?
Of creation.
Do not ponder. Do not plan.
Open up.
Sing.
He, the angel, the messenger,
Bears no message but
Sing.
Not what, not how, just
Sing.
I make my own message, messenger?
Yes.
If I never have before,
I can through your command.
I command because you can and don't.
I command so that you will and must.
But I've been listening to you.
I won't sound like myself.
Try.
A song to the angel, then,
To the spirit of change
The spirit I fly from
But never outrun.
The song of where my song began--
From my breath and his command.
Once from formless waste
The master of us both
Sung everything.
He, who works worlds,
Wrought me to sing words,
Made the angel of change,
And we, and we alone
Stand together in this barn.
We listen to this hymn, surprised.
Every word, as it hits the air, cries.
Today when I look in your face may I recognize the one I love.
Nothing has gone the way I planned. Nothing was ever going to.
So you are not who I thought you would be. Neither am I.
When I hear your voice, may I remember I love that voice.
You will not not say what I would say, or what I would have you say.
Your words may grate, contradict, bore.
I will picture your face while I listen, your true face.
When I say your name may you hear how I love you.
The intense heat, the real noise.
The shape of a rainbow.
Backwoods and dark ordinaries.
I know his music too well, I think.
Stumbling and lurching in this garden,
All magnolia and coral bells,
I hear, not him, but this.
Starling pulling worm.
Staccato cricket.
I see, not him, but this.
Creature drama.
Dappled path, quick shadow.
No respecter of me.
May you have a blessing come
At an unexpected time.
May you near drown with gratitude
That there is air to breathe
And voices and words
Soft light and harsh
And solid ground beneath.
May you fall in love
With those you know
And those you don't--
That you may meet someday
With the touch of the found long-lost.
And may you create.
May you bring newness.
And may what you create
Bring blessings
At unexpected times.
A birthday poem for Pollux.
Who you are
As you are
Yourself
No one else
You
A song sung
By your eyes on the world
Your gift of everything, anything
Delicate, crude, secret, loud
Of strange fascination
Or country-wise--
You are more that this
Beyond what I may shout.
Accept this thanks, any thanks
Accept
The curious shape days take
And
Sudden spilling darkness
And then
And then sun
Bursting in on cobwebbed corners
Lighting your changing face.
I'd give you--
Oh, what I'd give--
Ask it of all else
Ask it of the world
And then listen--
The answer will murmur
But the din,
Your cruel intruder,
Steals words spoken
By unfamiliar tongues.
Only listen.
Know much waits unheard, unseen
Tug at the hidden
Pull it to view.
We will guard
We will pledge
Our hands to grasp yours--
If you ask--
We will pay heed
To tears
Triumph
Music
Silence
And remind you
You have
A human inheritance.
You have
Eyes in the past
Eyes in new distance
Eyes in this moment
The song of this instant
You as you are
No one else
You.
Sing me St. Henry's Tower
Sing me the bell-home
Gone now but for memory, for photograph
Sing me all the vanished places
And the still-living
The gardens, carved slices
Of England, China, Japan
Where paths wind far father than they should
Sing me the night carnival
Of catwalks, steel spirals,
Castle gargoyles, concrete serpents
Sing me the fountain flanked by stones
Posing as ruins
Far older than they are
Sing me the collected pretenses
Of another age
And today's dreams
Waiting to be birthed by your song.
--Personal preference has nothing to do with it. You are where you are.
Sure, maybe you could move. Maybe you could also stop being your mother's child.
What are you looking for, really? Will leaving help you find it? Or will it just make you always gone?
Good and bad are everywhere, yeah, out there, in here, in your human heart. Flee the bad place and try to outrun the bad in you. You can't.
Even so--am I just preaching atrophy? If the house goes corrupt, will you know to escape? And how?
Until then--you can't know all there is to know about this one piece of soil in a lifetime of study. So why abandon it?
[Inspired by, but not dependent upon, actual conversation.]
"If you weren't a woman
but were just as you are
just exactly as you are
just not a woman--
with your same sharp mind
your fearless eyes
your laughing, loyal soul--
I'd never let go.
If you weren't a woman
I'd love you."
With you I've watched the stars fall.
Ten years ago we stood in your backyard
Giddy with new dark lateness--
We being good girls
More often early to bed.
The night was intoxication enough,
The night, its shower of stars,
Our hopes and secrets and school laughter.
With you I've watched the moon turn red.
"Goofballs" you called us last night
As we headed outdoors with handpainted wineglasses--
Roses and rosebuds--
Filled with white grape juice
(The night being intoxication enough).
We laughed that we knew ourselves
And searched the sky for the moon.
Clouds veiled it, unveiled it, hid it again.
We sat on your neighbor's front step.
"The dragon eats the moon in Vietnam."
You spoke of the serpent biting its tail,
How one day
You might imprint it on your skin.
I watched you shiver.
I brought a towel from my car
And draped it over your shoulders.
We watched the moon.
And now I've seen
Signs the world must end
And I've seen these signs with you.
I will touch my glass to yours
And toast the serpent feeding on itself
Who says more stars must fall
And the moon will pull away
From the hunger of those jaws.
Let us toast the beginning times.
I am not Yeats.
If it's a clunky line,
It's my clunky line
And I do not like to change it.
Better a poem honestly bad
Than untrue but pretty.
Where were you
When I was in the stony place?
You were the ache, the incompletion,
The undoing when all had been brought together.
You have never seen the structure
And those gathered within, to you, are holes;
When they walk they are less than shadows,
What they teach you will not learn:
The exquisite tension of denial,
The unexplored depths of surrender.
You will not see them,
You will not go in
Even as stone turns flesh, a heart,
Its vivid pulse my pulse
And the words not rote,
Not dust like books but beautiful,
And its loss would make the centuries weep
At the severed line of history
The war with precedent.
Be building, not breaking.
Go to it now with me.
Today is the quarrying of granite,
Hard rock which cannot be pounded away;
Today the mining for diamond,
Rare, light-throwing, pressure-immune.
What caught time has sunk deep and fused so?
Should we forsake dead mineral,
Dig instead for what lives?
The same earth yields root-language,
Chants and guttural song amid
Blind, white, creeping under-thoughts.
Slime and rot matches warmth of loam.
We are nourished by decay.
Here he housed a poem.
I found it on my return.
Did I trace his steps
Near stream and stone,
Near sacred pines, in slanting light?
I did not feel him,
Nor did he write
What I would say--
The place was the poem.
I learned its verse
Standing in that wonder, turning slow,
Believing a tree hollow holy.
Your sun and your stream,
Your light blessing green:
You are what I want my verse to be.
I build my pieced-together dreams
On the sprawl of your ancient majesty.