Versey

This Room

Naked came I to this room
Involuntary
Around me stand the harp and broom
And reliquary

Passersby perform the Parting Lie
Around my window
Berries blush their bluest in the shadow
Of the bottle-fly
Iward some daft light I know not darts between
The bulbous glow and foul insectuous sheen
And all that I can say is
This above and this below and this:

Why I know not nor to Whom
Naked came I to this room;
Naked fell I to the floor
No one bade me Shut The Door.

Song of a Field at Night

Of Kale Polli, she the long-betrothed
To One All-Loved Man -
I cannot speak in measure.
Her peace is all my pleasure.

Lumed in the final solar span
I saw her last, in countless tiny jewels clothed.
They were the waterdrops she lies amid,
For here, within an earthcloud, that man hid
Her, Kale Polli, his treasure.

I think, and shudder, once a day
(Since the loved man came and went)
Of dragons, and that six-legged Serpent
Who swore ago to shred her roasted flesh.
How her spires tremble, her high-hoven halls hush;
A song outsighs, “Oh Come, You All-Loved Man, and Stay…”

Shelter here, You Milky Lustrous Gem,
I am your Beloved’s land, O Kale Polli, I am true.
My clods are damp and ugly tubers sprout from them,
But every morning I aspire for you:
I breathe aloft a sheltering aerojewel cloud.
If he is yours, you are my reason to be proud.
For your sake, long ago, I was not left to burn.
Untroubled sleep: the All-Loved Man -
Having full unscrolled an Ancient Plan -
Will soon return.

After-Noon World

Dearest Maggie,
This afternoon I drove into the country.
Now tell me -

From vast curves
Would you not deduce movement?
Thus the moody hills
Through which I rushed
Forward
Put me in mind of a great hand
Fluidly sculpting
Sideways.
Add against a translucent wall
Of golden sky
A swirling torrent of blackbirds
Upward;
This afternoon world
Is enough to make a girl dizzy.

- – -

Crime longs for accomplices,
So I looked to the clouds.

I lay in the grass,
Glad and idle,
And gazed on the heavy
Heavenly idyll.

I saw luxurious heaps -
A plump white woman at ease
Cruising a raft, a weighted slow craft
Stretching,
Swelling,
Rolling from back to belly
And back.

Ah, Maggie, let me tell you -
Her languid hand floated beside.
Silver fingertips
Brushed the tops of trembling trees…

This brushing of clouds and trees
Is a summer illusion -
For how high up,
Really,
Do the clouds billow?
Likewise, how far must they travel
Before watering the land?
Suddenly I saw the wind -
Which makes such mountains of mist
Turn over and over,
Driving them across the face of the earth -

At this point I decided to
Stand up and go do something.

Love,
AR

Among The Wood-People

Come, neighbor;
Breathe my perfume and I will taste your fruit.
We shall not be divided, you and I,
Since our particular roots have stretched themselves and fingered down
Through sanded clay, through dank edged dirt,
And dipped with selfsame thirsty joy
In one selfsame,
Deliberate, Resplendent, Surgent Source.

WWI

I

White wine wonders
red wine knows
(give me Blue for the morning rose)

Fly down, Angel
with your steel nose
plant
steel
seeds
in stuttering rows.

(The democrat hardly knows
what is going when it goes.)

II

To your parents, Last,
but your sons call you First;
First of your kind,
the tall, gray, Cursed

Of whom, pray, will the Judge demand:
Why did this boy die of thirst?

White Wind wanders
Red Poppy glows
And Blue Lords topple in helpless rows.

Willowareland

Passing into the Willow Ware
Is something one doesn’t often dare;
But when you arrive in Willowareland
Be sure to wield a steady hand.

O deep blue shadows and shallow white light;
The shores of Willowareland by night!
Shores where you battle the Willoware Dragon
In quest of the fabled Willoware Flagon,
While from pearly trees float the savage cries
Of the Willoware Boy to him who tries:
“Rally from foliage; Rally to blue;
Cheer him on by the Light of Lue!
Give him one, two three four five;
Give him one last laugh alive!”

Then you advance with prickling spear;
With sickling gut do you go near
Over the bone-white sands you tread,
Over blue bones of trees that are dead
(Things you can’t see from the cupboard door
But once in that land, emerge galore!)
And there, behind the blue willow tree,
One little tooth sticks out, you see.
Your mama thinks it is a leaf;
Your mama, sadly, lacks belief.
It is a dragon, well you know,
for now appears the dust-blue foe!

His head sinks down with a dreadful sway,
All glimmery-glare in the Willoware way;
He rears along with smokey-blue breath
And you think of Jane, but not of death,
Lying on fallen blue and white leaves
And spearing his passing flanks, like eaves.

Still, the outcome is quite a surprise,
For no one in Willowareland ever dies
(That’s why the Willoware Boy only cries
Not to the winner, but him who tries.)
So with hoary white gasps you battle hard
With slim white arms raised upon the blue sward;
But you’ll sit down when the ladies have come
Out of the willowware they are from;

Pale blue maids in a milk-white wagon,
To drink, with you boys and the Willoware Dragon,
Clear blue tea from the Willoware Flagon.

Folk Poem I

I am a fool
And I know why:
I was born under
A bronze, bronze sky
When some stark bird
Fell from its nest,
And died within
My mothers’ breast.

A warring girl
With bronze, bronze hair
Called to the wind
But none was there;
Spoke to the grave
With no reply
Then something gave
In her bronze, bronze eye.

O come with me
Who on the earth
Creep haltingly
Twixt death and birth
O come with me
All you who long
For more to be
Than fair and strong.

And you who crave
For other worlds
Beyond this world
And every world
We shall mourn sore
What death has sown
And stand up more
Than men have known.

Folk Poem II

My love was wondering where I’d gone
He sought me long and weeping
But fellow travellers had I none
Save there were cliff-vines creeping

I wished him daring by my side
And bitter was my feeling
Alone I slashed a dragon’s hide
With bats around me wheeling

At last I fell, as fall I must
For I was fighting lonely
I crashed against the planet’s crust
Nor broke my breastbone only

And then I saw him fight my foes -
He whom I’d thought craven -
High on the peak my true love strove
With bats and with a dragon

Ah love, that I had bid you go
With me as my companion!
For lonely now you strike my foe
And lonely is this canyon.

Grandma Charlotte’s Smile

I

Feathered grasses float before
A chipped door, eight decades old.

Old, ornate, many-windowed:
Our house, hoard for handy-men.

I’m just six; I cross cracked tiles
To where Grandma’s washing walls.

Gray-grimed walls, once gilt-papered
Are streaked now by soap and silt.

Her hard-worked hands halt halfway -
She feels me standing; turns, and smiles.

II

Twice we moved; I turned eighteen.
At her table Grandma sat
All day, with Coke and Solitaire
And newspapers, most unread.

At night the windows opened
Deer approached, crickets slipped in.

I stretched to span the lamplit floor
And turned to talk with Grandma.

Missing teeth startled me,
But I recall her smile daily.

Nameless

What song can I sing?
I have not a word to say;
Full of emptiness,
in wordless prayers I pray
toward formless forms and heatless burnings
toward Flyers In The Heaven without wing
and know – it is not You! You are not these!
O! (Whom shall I address?)
To what bright center shall I press,
and truly say: Ah, it is you! At last?
(When will I be strong enough to grip you fast?)

Should I form pictures in my mind?
And say: this homely glow upon these yellow leaves,
this pale pink fuse of dawn like frosted glass
these vast upswelling sheets, bright on the lake -

all these I have loved in loving you;
yet you are none of these.

Where art thou, Lord?
A Child I cry -
And Teacher to my soul, reply:
closer than I.

***

Jesus. There’s a name in which my mind can rest.
O beautiful and gentle son of Mary,
Your face here framed is long and brown;
You have her eyes.
This beard is full of dignity;
This mouth is firm and wise.
Where did you find your knowledge,
peasant’s son?
Where did you find your meekness,
son of kings?
How did your tired body learn to walk
with such persistent tread
On waves that melt beneath all other feet?
Why are you so beloved, who once was dead?
In desert loneliness you prayed for forty days
(Two ages past)
and the world cannot forget you ever since.

Receive me today
O Son of God.
Your mother shall be mine;
I’ll listen at her knee.
I’ll taste your bread and wine.
Oh plant me as a willow tree,
And in your temple make me sprout:
I shall never more go out.

Broken Verse

Mealy potatoes,
Moist rice;
Some things the poor eat
Are rather nice

Out of God’s hand
Life flows;
Into his other hand
Life goes

Love-Talker Talking

Lady, come over the ivory field
Clad in cream linen and milkweed down
Wait for me under the Fireweed Trees
Crossing your arms, the white on the brown

I’ll come dance the dance of the flame-lipped lizard
Salamandral, beasts’ own wizard,
I’ll dance so solemn your face will bring flying
Wind River, switches of air that come prying -

The down of your sleeves will float apart
Whirling around my tree and your heart
Nothing there will be only one thing
But arms be a cross and the voiceless sing

Milkweed down, in the treble voice
Each wisp with a whittling whistle rejoice
Ravens, too, who cannot sing at all
Will be themselves notes and the notes will fall

Glittering spill-spray from bankments on high
Banked up clouds in the Sun-Lord’s sky
Notes will be cherried and shivered and sharp
Halfway between the viol and harp.

Nor will the colors be colors alone
Colors are wind and wind is a moan
A moan is the sight of oceans that hover
Beneath the hung breast of the lord’s dimmer lover

There fore, O Lady, the fields await you
Leave the brothers that love and that hate you
Leave for my hope all love of food,
Hope of warmth, fear of the lewd;

Go if you hope that I will soon come
Cross your arms and flee from your home
Leave for the alien all that you know
In ivory fields go, kneel in the snow

The Coarse and the Divine

Here, a filament
too thin to be green
stands up on a cane of slow silent water
from under warm dirt.
Here, under the sun,
is a Radish Plant.

Radishes are good with salt.
I learned this kneeling
at garden’s edge with my dad
while a knife and a saltshaker sat in the grass.
The sun was too warm, the air too cool…
My problem is, small pleasures I’ve had
seem to me intimations of thunderous hidden glories,
suggesting more than do these cruel
twists of fate in important literary stories.

I’m neither artist nor critic, I know. But -
where have I not been
that matters?

There was a place where one thing flowed into another.
While we were there, the warm night
began dispensing light, our mother
lighting candles on Nativity’s Eve.
Under a stone roof
(an old masonry dome)
a rock wall
enclosed an earthy big bowl
cradling a houseful of freezing spring water.
The roof was the beginning of wonders:
through the gapes we could see galaxies;
where it was still solid we could see
the flickering dreams stone heavens have of the waters beneath.

The water slid out through a rusted grate
into what promised to be a pond.
Already giddy, we ran
out the door,
up the path,
wheeled right,
and saw a corridor of water
laid beneath heavens not of stone.

So little a length of water
passed down to the muttering silverwood bridge
So vast a space of black heaven hovered
between either ridge.
We arrived and a marriage caught fire:
The deep divine took a terrestial bride
The deep pool lit with her lover inside;
Nay, we saw a blessed lady glide
down to where air and water collide
and just at the spot we could point to and murmur
a shadowlord bowed and undid her.

Just then. For without our bridesmaid eyes
the heavens could only gaze down in desire
the pond gaze up in dim surmise,
with the chaperone atmosphere between,
their affinity only a sheen.

It’s standing and staring
I recall ,
Hands spread, heart stopped,
My face in a pall…
Oh, I’ve been silly and wicked
and all,
And once a boy I admired walked behind me,
which made me trip and fall.
Down the stairs.
It was tragic.

I am troubled by one quandary:
What can other people  do
who’ve never indulged in the coarsest rapture,
never seen holiness in a state of nature?

Silently: (”What is that to you?
You, follow me.”)

Colors of April

Gray and white, gray and white and gray;
That which has died should not so frisky play
The winter’s ghost ought not so lightly fling
Snowflakes as in Autumn, now in Spring.

Green can be the color of a blade of grass;
The liquid tint of antique glass;
A hue that hovered in our glade
Upon the trees, between the trees, the last day that we played;
Green can be revealed by a waking April dawn;
Or just another color that the Gray Ghost dumped upon.

Gray are the walls of life inside The Fish’s Mouth
Jaws that close on lake-dwellers who left The South.

Lent

I suffer death
his hard blue sting
his theft of breath
his hammering

Yet though worlds fade
before my eyes
I’m not thus made
the thing that dies

I am the wounds
I am the tree
I am the sin
Remember me