In the winding
of the vine
our voices stretch
from us and twine —
No, going into the waiting places
is not easy. Flowers fade there.
around the year’s
fermented wine —
Mostly, it’s surrender of wanting,
or the fear that a flame will be dampened—
or that everything warm will come rushing
over me with reproach—or that endless
needles could be ranged in the tunnel—
or that my bare feet would be slippery—
Yellow. Fall roars
down to the ground,
loud, in the leafy sun that pours
liquid through doors.
Yellow, the leaves go down
or that once I’m down in that darkness
someone outside will block off the entrance—
Touches of gold stipple the branches,
promising weeks of time —
Thread with Me
My lover, when you riddle with me—
reddening slowly, then suddenly free,
turned like a key
Oh! the falling flowers have caught me
by dipping yellow, purple towards the hunger—
—the hard, the intricate dark
(I hear the notes of your words
ring for me cool as the birds,
my lover—
through the long year’s
fermenting wine
her thin stems turning, held to be—lost—
my lover, when you thread with me
Now you are uncurled and cover our eyes
with the edge of winter sky,
leaning over us in icy stars
through this night-shot
night-shot dark
is never easy.
Flowers fade here.
Voices pull me on through the cavern
from the new season. Her voice old, silent—
our hands, our breasts, our curves
curl through our hands and ravel—
On damp limestone, a violet curling—
my lover, when you riddle with me
the hard, the intricate dark.
Rack me with courage, spring,
come kill me, flowers;
if we are shadows, come;
make me our shadows
as I reach for flowers.
OVER DARK ARCHES
Naked and thin and wet, as if with rain,
bursting I come out of somewhere, bursting again.
And like a great building that breathes under sunlight
over dark arches, your body is there,
And my milk moves under your tongue—
where currents from earth linger under cool stone
rising to me and my mouth makes a circle
over your silence
You reach through your mouth to find me—
Bursting out of your body that held me for years,
as the rain wets the earth with its bodies—
And my thoughts are milk to feed you
till we turn and are empty,
till we turn and are full.
A CAROL FOR CAROLYN
It is easy to be a poet,
brim with transparent water.
—Carolyn Kizer, “In the First Stanza”
I dreamed of a poet who gave me a whale
that shadowed clear pools through the kelp-making shade.
When beached sea-foam dried on the rocks, it would sail
down currents that gathered to pool and cascade
with turbulent order.
She brims with transparent water,
as mother and poet and daughter.
The surface is broken and arching and full,
impelled by the passions of nation and woman.
The waves build and fall; the deep currents pull
toward rocky pools cupping the salt of the human.
The ocean she’s authored
brims, with transparent water,
for
