toss

 

toss

Which would be better, what sticks or what falls through?

Or does the choice itself create the value?

                                                                Seamus Heaney

                                                                The Riddle

maybe not every day but most days

or it's

the length of time spent tying the fly 

to that of it being 

lit, bit, tricked

or it's

maybe she wouldn't have been there after

all and wasn't.  maybe it was just

his breath and blood in the tunnel

or it's

an echo

chamber sounding like running off

in the dark

or it's

opening you and

your jacket keeps slipping

down your spine

or it's

hoisting it that

means I can finally

touch...

or it's

your bones, each

strung to the next by human

sinew up to the nape of your neck to the beneath...

or it's

your skull

to the bottom most

tip of your coccyx

or it's 

the lift of something of you that's rested

all these years

or it's

a suspension in water-

glass like a wintering

egg laid in November and eaten in spring

vignettes

 

vignettes

--how ice cracks having

tasted  the Jamieson's  

and lets itself out

to breathe

--how two days gone

into autumn and the sun is still

coming on strong, stronger

knowing the inevitable

loss

--how maybe what you saw

was a culmination toward

the denouement and was sent

falling falls still

inside of you

--how you bend to

see the majesty

and the allegation

of the debris

--how trained to scan

for curls of smoke coming up

through the vast canopies

one look away is 

decapitation

--how sometimes

its best to read things in order

of their arrival and other times

in order to survive

--how to be close to you

i took Klimpt's women

to my lips and sipped what was

--(and how

warm, how soon cooled 

as I closed my mouth

on you

on Capturing Nureyev

 

On Capturing Nureyev

consider:

maybe the thing you love

you love because someone you love

loves it and so by virtue...

:

cloud cover, how the behind

is visible to the backsides

of the side

:

the rope wants your nude

and naked (oh both!

you know the difference)

palm, the pouchy closure

of your grip before the warp 

the fire!  of trying to let go

:

Rudi Nureyev had a brief

agreement with Gravity.  Sir, he said.  Sir,

Gravity said.  Who bowed first?

bookmark: shelf life

 bookmark: shelf life

who knew even the least

of these would be, in the humidor

of the poetry

of Seamus Heaney, his piece

about the haw

lantern and the one wandering

diogenes wanting, of wont

one honest or just (held up

to the light from 

the dark) woman or man

in the carapace of its own

singular vault. 

Anticipating "The Artifice of Blue Light"

Anticipating "The Artifice of Blue Light"

lupine seeds for a book

mark i leave off just as

they are leaving off

and by all intents

and purposes it will be

for the long time 

that forever is and never

become, as those two

folks go to bed together

and make children, 

children that come up

from the bare desert 

of the womb that's sung

the blues all these years

running.  ironic, if you

want, or some might

say it's just

coincidence, having 

a packet of seeds handy

to make of them a staying

place for the vernacular.  maybe this is

the only season I've got

left to get them into

their reward,

plunge them back 

into their caul

of dark and predict

a miracle will arrive by

way of my front gate.  at home

the lupines

make their own wild way

and they jut their peppery stuff

up from the salt and smoke

and take to the land

the way only the scattered

and finally planted have to

if they want

a say in anything about them,

how they are seen and leaned

into, how they pluck

or brush by elbows &

chests, and feel

the sweet hurt 

at the mercy of something other

than their fingertips un

-zipping their husks finally

to come undone: by birds

by curious kids, by

meticulous women skinning

them for their pent-up pink

or white or lavender sal-

utations at being and continuing

with being a being.

*title of a catalogue collection 

of henriette wyeth's still lifes.

steadfastness, after choosing

 

steadfastness, after choosing

 

remember when the choice you made

was the smallest of them all

and you clutched it in your pocket

and dug in your heals

and rode all the way home moving it

to be its own beating against your chest

which was also beating 

and it washed your face and hands

in its own surplice of benediction?

everything he's been waiting for

everything he's been waiting for

the puppy, wanting the nuzzle

of the love coming from

the leavened and whiskered

muzzle of his mother, nudges

again and again toward 

the drip of milk his litter

mates kick and scratch and lift

him from.  the one 

festering, level-with-his-jaw-

and along his neck, puncture

wound after the true 

air-is-new, out-of-the-womb

and to keep free of the hush

dug tombs, the boy comes empty

but for his forefront coverage:

the mud from the puddles 

coming up like geysers, the rush

to the runt and the cuddle to 

the stew of his chest-sweat

and wool: the rump

stuffed into the ripped designer

pocket the brand Levi

stuck to the fold like a collar

like a name, now that he's saved,

everything he's been waiting for.