Winter Solstice

 

Blue, tense with cold and joy--

or is it the moon that makes the world seem larger?

 

Welted and platinum, sky soars above

this patched parquet of snowbleached yards.

 

When I cross over into whatever

ample vanishing waits beyond prayer,

 

the verge of my breathing,

will I take this with me: inner road, roofless house

 

where I stand, bound by the spell

of your absence and the stammel of my blood

 

drawing you through me--pilgrim artery,

homing vein--such distances--

 

like heaven, defying any subtraction of light

with its electric, effacing horizon?

 

 

Hiatus

 

Late November, & I crouch

knees in arms--

        like a saint, Issa would say--

 

beneath night’s blue wound,  

its wicks, spurs,

        & blunt expirings. 

 

We’re apart,

& the moon catches

        her hook

 

in my throat, my eyes,

the splint of rooftop,

        silverplated beeches.

 

If I saw even a spark

of you among the stiff

        brushes of the pines,

 

I’d move toward you.

In worship, I mean,

        the way a flung host

 

of sobbing starlings, wheeling,

fills the evening trees

        with leaving.

 

 

© From BLUE VENUS (Persea Books, 2004).