my dear, love is -

- well, how can i explain? you will feel
it, when you do, like
the sight of spring
opening,
empty,
and filled,
like breaths you do not remember,
like dreams you do not recall;
you will feel it like a reaching and a never arriving,
you will feel it like a birth and a forever dying.

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is it the gray month

is it the winter rain in the cavern of her
breasts cracking
stone where it falls that makes her break and
say

i'm old
and i'm alone oh

if only if only

i could take the coldness from her
i'd lay it like a shroud over the sky and lick
her ragged forehead till it was smooth as milk.

wish

I cannot smile with the other children;
I have no pearl-bright teeth.
I cannot sing along with them;
My heart does not agree.

Let me be with the shadow forms
who dance on naked feet.
Let me be myself, and glad,
on the dark periphery.

Dreams

Where do dreams come from? From whither ideas?

Like children, secret, bold, they seem
who in the dead of night escape
their father's stern and vigilant gaze,
then whispering walk the way denied
down to the writhing sea.

There they run haphazardly
and in my sleep, beneath
my eyelids closed, I catch
the motions of an untimed dance. I try
to learn the steps by
heart, but joy is not an art.

and then - the sea -
the tides move - the moon,
the heavens shift,
recede - back up the hidden way, they're gone
by dawn - they cannot stay.

In the sunlight, things are righted.
Indents on my mind's shore fade;
the sand is even once again,
but the earth remains forever changed.

Spring (a poem from a dream)

All the world has woken finally;
The sun is shining bright - hurray!
Fat clouds amble, smiling lazily;
The wind is soft and sweet today.
And oh, the children, all so beautiful,
running, laughing, off they go!
But here I am cold still and silent
For no friend calls my way "hello,"
and this is as it is, and so.

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does the universe
feel the pain i feel
does someone somewhere
ache with me or maybe

i'm a dot of sand
watching a great sadness
rolling in waiting
to be taken and now i know
how pearls aren't made.

beauty, and inaccessibility

What does the wind feel like, I wonder, that doesn't stick
to my licked finger-
print. The lines
of my palms politely curled
darken daily, settle down. It troubles me:
somewhere leaves blush under the sun's affections but
I can never know to just what bright confused complexion
of red and gold. Yes, it troubles me, the limits
of the skin I'm in,
the bones that bind, the beauty unseen.
But here is some consolation at least: the wind I taste is sweet.