7
Blue irises after dark
driving lamplight and Venice-glass
into a fine distraction : bise in a crystal line
wanting to know what you know and why
there’s a smear of milk on my shirt so long
after weaning these heroes of eros
I planted incendiary kisses on solemn mouths
all over the island of matchless greed
whose trees see and know this and it grows
bees who mistake its name in a line of fire
run to delicate helices where they dance
orientation Then what is before us
in the night wind where irises calibrate desire
and the rhyme is a voice like sunlight?
honeybee
Apex you’ll come to one fine morning
set with that breakfast milk on the island steps
a full feast of fresh air under your belt
It’s a small island, turtle in the channel
rare for the latitude, the islanders touchy
about a fragile domestic economy Two
of them bang away at an extension to the house
dreamed up last night and being paid for
in green dollars The Friday night pizzas
are legendary if you know which boat to get
and there on the rockface is the aretaloger’s sign
sans me fatiguer ni de jour ni de nuit—
a little dairy factory by the name of Isis Lactans
pumping out soft cheeses of a truly divine nature
9
We could all go some more we could go down
for it ourselves and come back on the Cream Run
one quay at a time, mangos bagels wisdom
from the markets where you lean on one elbow
after making love and begin to make
the universe dooby doux to a tune that suits
your ripening sense of history
Going out for the makings, staying in to eat
mouth to mouth, why was it lost most
when we needed that contagion in the telling?
There is still the special place on her head
where they touch her for more of the story
while back in bed a sleep of hands and hearts
is airing nectar in all the generous mouths
10
How beautiful in jandals, o prince’s daughter
the motive bones of your finely dusted feet
on the road to the cape and back
many summers past small clips of paradise
In the dark doorway the Fire Chief, a stir
of silver buttons and a ceremonial axe
as he walks into the picture again His are the gifts
you are learning to take from the ballerina plate
piled high between you in all of his houses
Sometimes the regalia signifies, sometimes
it’s just a couple of beers over lunch
watching your seventeen-year-old self descend
from the tree with the big nest of epiphytic lilies
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