Smiling in the Silk of Flags

Whose kiss initiates me only for a moment

Whose darkest secret hides the stranger’s eye

Whose tongue caresses the moment before action

Whose voice invokes the powdery light of sunset

Whose words drop leafy at my feet

Whose breathing has yet to crystallize my thought

Whose wrath endangers wayward stars

Whose countenance calms constellations

Whose pale skin drinks the milk of the moon

Whose narrow shoulders spread ancient wings

Whose lovely silhouette barely discerns itself

Whose blue eyes tell the good will of friends

Whose buttocks remain enviously shapely

Whose lips reconcile us yes before they spit

And the Clouds Go on and on

Now you are being poured upward

And I hold your legs though I don’t

Believe it for a minute this is all so

Sort of Sunday and summer and hot

When the sky reaches and you rise

Into your strangely fluent palace

Where cumulus chambers breathe

Plural moments all being beautifully

Blonde each form having its own

Particular way of moving when you

Invite me to stand atop a world

That we release without regret not

An iota! O my darling barnacled heart

Tomorrow opens like a human hand 

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For the Petulant Two-Fisted Heart

Suddenly attentive at the instant

The instance draws near

Slowly and more slowly now 

Evanescent and fragrantly rosy oh boy!

What fun it is

Greeting what happens next

The poem whose

Words become a blazoned face 

The poem whose attendant amiability

Names what it cannot speak

What it can only wish to do

O no more dolorous possibilities

Gnawing faintly hopeful clouds  

No more spite in the velvet pity 

Waiting down a long sweet song 

That smells only vaguely true

Don’t these exhausted roses ever think?

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The Respectful Art of Gazing

We long for nothing exceptional only

Love at the water’s edge

And an unerring eye for exquisite details

The possibility of holding a frozen scene

In our cupped hands O look! this poem

Desires to register the here and now

By means of any number of evocative images

The buttoned jacket of that man for example

And the string dangling before the child’s hand

These invoke our sense of touch

As does the woman’s right hand

Caressing her cascading curls a rhyme

With the oak branch draped in Spanish moss

And judging from the long shadows

It must be the end of a leisurely day

Certainly whatever was going on has reached

A pause for see how the man droops rather

Concentrating on his own preoccupations

A steel drum and a wooden barrel

Stand near the bayou where several boats

Are either moored or drawn up on shore

Notice the bicycle’s front wheel

Turned slightly toward us what does it mean?

What to make of this man this woman this child

And these other things presented in a distinct

Continuum so we might appreciate them

At our leisure and for ourselves the respectful

Art of gazing 

Countenances no action

That might narrowly define the moment

 

Subiaco

On a hill in western Arkansas

There is a monastic community

Where each gives according to his ability

And receives according to his need

But sadly and in profile

So what if night’s wakeful hand

Unleashes carnivorous clouds

So what if animals rest before sleep

Sometimes the monks ponder

A very real and deep spiritual bond

Between the apple and the knife

The monks inhabit a state of mind

They abandoned cities of troubled swagger

Towns of tepid severity

They are auditors of moonlight

And wear sorrow’s habit of conquest

They cannot see the evident and obvious

Bruised starlight in their eyes

Why should they seek the end of the rope

The monks are unfamiliar with visual stereotypes

Unequipped to wear complacent public faces

They walk this interminable span of gullied land

Their hearts asking no questions

These monks who were born wounded

Six times in behalf of prodigal shadows

Only Because It Pleases the Tongue

Branches reach like sinuous rafters peaceful

At evening when a bird loses all measure

Of these leaves this land that memory

Captive before spoken things the soul

A thread tied to a star the slow passage

Of everything could have been different

Could have been waiting for you like rain

In your wineglass the remorseless flame

Of sound the intractable smoke of silence

A sheet wrapped around a thought now

Let us praise those who pray alone with cold

Stones O how they love that which awaits

Its own defeat how they adore that which

Reconciles its own face with its own scream 

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