(between parentheses)
after R.S.
dear poet,
there is nothing
accidental
about this metaphor:
that we are children
reaching hands
in the hard calloused
eyes of the ferryman who
steers between the winks
of channel-markers
into gloamed twilight;
that we step
quietly on the creaking
planks of secrets and
drink in coastlines
like sweetwater;
and that we finally
follow stars hot
& hard as July earth
until each
reaches home again.
metaphor for the middle of May
although near sunset i walk
the same barefoot circles
round the same gravel despair,
morning finds me
prying last autumn’s leaf fall
from the damp spring earth,
letting the soil breathe a
chance for the emergence of
new green.
it was a good thing (he knew CPR)
the morning after
december’s first snowfall i
woke up in clear eyes,
borrowed pajamas and with a
chest bruised
from where the
doctors had pumped wild
air back into lips and
lungs that for too
long had tasted only
salt.
afraid
i saw her in my dreams,
crying. metaphor for an implicit
tragedy haunting horizons
between the possible and
the inevitable; echoed footfalls
fill the edges, hauling
memories from an abyss
like coal-diggers in dark hills,
the weight of the earth
pressing on their eyeballs
and making it difficult to breathe.
tentatively i step
off the circumference
of my own breathlessness,
look out from under my
lashes and wonder if
the meaning is yours or
if the tears will all be
my own.
metaphor
yesterday is burning.
not cleanly, but like an oil fire with
lots of dark smoke and haze;
it’s not clear anymore what
lies on the other side.
i should try and save
what i can, i suppose,
sort through mouldering triumphs
before all is ash, but
the acridness singes the hairs inside my nose,
makes me want to squint my eyes and duck my head,
forget it ever happened.
