burnished thighs,
back with the sheen of china but sturdy as brick,
that back nobody rides on.
Instead of a saddle, the poised arms,
the wide apart breasts, the alert head
are thrust up from the horse’s supple torso
like a swimmer who breaks water to look
but doesn’t clamber out or drown.
She is not monstrous
but whole in her power, galloping:
both the body tacking to the seasons of her needs
and the tiger lily head aloft with tenacious gaze.
This torso is not ridden.
This face is no rider.
As a cascade is the quickening of a river,
here thought shoots in a fountain to the head
and then slides back through
those rippling flanks again.
Some collisions bring luck
I had grown invisible as a city sparrow.
My breasts had turned into watches.
Even my dreams were of function and meeting.
Maybe it was the October sun.
The streets simmered like laboratory beakers.
You took my hand, a pumpkin afternoon
with bright rind carved in a knowing grin.
We ran upstairs.
You touched me and I flew open.
Orange and indigo feathers broke through my skin.
I rolled in your coarse rag-doll hair.
I sucked you like a ripe apricot down to the pit.
Sitting crosslegged on the bed we chattered
basting our lives together with ragged stitches.
Of course it all came apart
but my arms glow with the fizz of that cider sun.
My dreams are of mating leopards and bronze waves.
We coalesced in the false chemistry of words
rather than truly touching
yet I burn cool glinting in the sun
and my energy sings like a teakettle all day long.
We become new
How it feels to be touching
you: an Io moth, orange
and yellow as pollen,
wings through the night
miles to mate,
could crumble in the hand.
Yet our meaning together
is hardy as an onion
and layered.
Goes into the blood like garlic.
Sour as rose hips,
gritty as whole grain,
fragrant as thyme honey.
When I am turning slowly
in the woven hammocks of our talk,
when I am chocolate melting into you,
I taste everything new
in your mouth.
You are not my old friend.
How did I used to sit
and look at you? Now
though I seem to be standing still
I am flying flying flying
in the trees of your eyes.
Meetings like hungry beaks
There is only time to say the first word,
there is only time to stammer the second.
Traffic jams the highways of nerve,
lungs fill with the plaster of demolition.
Each hour has sixty red and gold and black hands
welding and plucking and burning.
Your hair crosses my mouth in smoke.
The bridge of arms,
the arch of backs:
our fingers clutch.
The violet sky lights and crackles
and fades out.
I am at a desk adding columns of figures.
I am in a supermarket eyeing meat.
The scene repeats on the back of my lids
like an advertisement in neon
for another world.
To be of use
The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.
I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.
I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.
The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.
Bridging
Being together is knowing
even if what we know
is that we cannot
back with the sheen of china but sturdy as brick,
that back nobody rides on.
Instead of a saddle, the poised arms,
the wide apart breasts, the alert head
are thrust up from the horse’s supple torso
like a swimmer who breaks water to look
but doesn’t clamber out or drown.
She is not monstrous
but whole in her power, galloping:
both the body tacking to the seasons of her needs
and the tiger lily head aloft with tenacious gaze.
This torso is not ridden.
This face is no rider.
As a cascade is the quickening of a river,
here thought shoots in a fountain to the head
and then slides back through
those rippling flanks again.
Some collisions bring luck
I had grown invisible as a city sparrow.
My breasts had turned into watches.
Even my dreams were of function and meeting.
Maybe it was the October sun.
The streets simmered like laboratory beakers.
You took my hand, a pumpkin afternoon
with bright rind carved in a knowing grin.
We ran upstairs.
You touched me and I flew open.
Orange and indigo feathers broke through my skin.
I rolled in your coarse rag-doll hair.
I sucked you like a ripe apricot down to the pit.
Sitting crosslegged on the bed we chattered
basting our lives together with ragged stitches.
Of course it all came apart
but my arms glow with the fizz of that cider sun.
My dreams are of mating leopards and bronze waves.
We coalesced in the false chemistry of words
rather than truly touching
yet I burn cool glinting in the sun
and my energy sings like a teakettle all day long.
We become new
How it feels to be touching
you: an Io moth, orange
and yellow as pollen,
wings through the night
miles to mate,
could crumble in the hand.
Yet our meaning together
is hardy as an onion
and layered.
Goes into the blood like garlic.
Sour as rose hips,
gritty as whole grain,
fragrant as thyme honey.
When I am turning slowly
in the woven hammocks of our talk,
when I am chocolate melting into you,
I taste everything new
in your mouth.
You are not my old friend.
How did I used to sit
and look at you? Now
though I seem to be standing still
I am flying flying flying
in the trees of your eyes.
Meetings like hungry beaks
There is only time to say the first word,
there is only time to stammer the second.
Traffic jams the highways of nerve,
lungs fill with the plaster of demolition.
Each hour has sixty red and gold and black hands
welding and plucking and burning.
Your hair crosses my mouth in smoke.
The bridge of arms,
the arch of backs:
our fingers clutch.
The violet sky lights and crackles
and fades out.
I am at a desk adding columns of figures.
I am in a supermarket eyeing meat.
The scene repeats on the back of my lids
like an advertisement in neon
for another world.
To be of use
The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.
I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.
I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.
The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.
Bridging
Being together is knowing
even if what we know
is that we cannot
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