pluck the olives
off the white lattice.
Their thick skins
rinsed in the moonshine.
A Singer with Eyes of Sand
A singer with eyes of sand they said—
the western wind
sweeps me home,
and I am carrying you, my desert,
in my hands.
FROM Two Ravens
1976
The Taoist Painter
He begins with charcoal and outlines
the yellow fringes of the trees.
Then he rubs in the stumps, black
and brown, with an uneasy motion
of his thumbs. Unlike trees in the north,
he says, I have the option of season.
And he paints the leaves in the upswing
of the wind, and the swans craning their necks.
But the sunlight moving in patches
obscures and clarifies his view.
When he walks off in silence
we look at his painting and stand
astonished to see how, in chiaroscuro,
the leaves drift to their death.
Bruegel
The haystacks burned to black moss.
I tilted my head and leveled
the mound; saw three women walking
home in step, hefting hoes, and
weighted by sunlight on the blades.
Three men, of course, circled away,
heads concealed by hats, joking,
clearly drunk on harvest wine.
But then the pageant slipped off
without me; the horse loped across
the ridge, and the sickle mender
tuned his ears to the wind.
The Silver Trade
You will hammer silver into a heart
and the dogs will leap and yell.
No one will stop you though, and
before learning how the body dies,
you will smelt earrings for fuel.
Nail my spine to wood. I cannot live.
Under the open sky the wind
whips the sunlight into stone.
I thread the few stars into a crown
and throw them behind the mountain.
He Will Come to My Funeral with a White Flower
He will come to my funeral with a white flower
and spread the petals, unevenly, on my dress.
Then he will turn, walk down the aisle, and
raise his elbow to accompany his invisible bride.
Oh, though he comes with me to the market
and we buy fruit and vegetables for dinner,
he is a hermit in the mountains, watching
the water and the sunlight on the green stones.
His hands skim the rise and fall, reshaping
the ridges and making the bend a woman’s thigh.
No one can ever be part of his village, don
palm leaves and wear an inscrutable smile.
When he says goodbye, I know the water in his eyes
has been falling for centuries.
Two Ravens
discussed the weather?
or, perhaps, inquired about spring?
Two ravens, lovers, discussed my death
as I watched.
The Waking
Blue plums in the pewter bowl—
may they wake wet in the earth the wren singing
and cull the sweetest violet.
But the children sleep secure in blankets.
I climbed by spinning arms and legs against walls,
awakened waist-deep in the water-well;
wrestled the black bull before an audience,
beat the wind without wings,
paced the steeds along pampas grass …
In the morning chill
I breathe moths in my cupped hands.
North to Taos
The aspen twig
or leaf will snap: bells in the wind,
and
