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Thursday, January 28, 2010



How fortunate Iam. Medusa's Kitchen published three poems and two photographs today. The Tree Spirit photo is one of my personal favorites. I keep looking at it and discovering new faces in the patterns of the trees.

A SLIGHT BREATHING


Hovering over the words,

Herding them, moving them

Into small groups. Full of meaning.


Here, the description of the heavens

Staggers forward, dragging

Its collection of constellations

Behind it; fully aware

That these pictures are but part

Of light seen from a single

Place, struggling to maintain

Themselves as the heavens

Reel around them.


These, are the words of lovers.

There is no end to them.

They slide and describe,

Word after word, the varieties of touch;

Definite descriptions, of flesh

Meeting flesh, in all temperatures and climates.


Gratefully, we follow these things,

Charmed that language

Allows us such rooms,

Such variety of discourse.


From the dark hills comes

The coughing of lions,

Calls of birds. william

Blake, moving room to room

Searching for the right phrase.


SACRED HARP MUSIC


The language off on its own

Dance. sometimes, when the night

Spreads itself like a lover across

The bed of dreaming I can smell

The musk of words on my skin.

A way of saying that cannot

Be made with the mouth.

I run my tongue along the lips

of this lover. It is exquisite

as in bone pain or heartbreak.

When words touch this deep

There are flaming swords, there

Over east of Eden. One cannot determine

Depth of feeling. there is no device

To measure this deep.

Light cannot penetrate here,

Only the the movements of breath

In and out, in and out, words

Themselves are not admitted here.

Still, it is language, still it is

Touching that drives so deep

Into the core of loving that

Everything is understood.

It is such of mystery that no one

Has blood enough or time to

Offer explanation. Amazing grace.

How the mountains rise from the plain.

How the seas rush to know all

That is called land.


MAKING YOUR NAME


The wind, in from the desert,

Ruined from running through

The litany of winter, barely able

To speak. Still now, it attempts

To say your name. Blows through

The vowel sounds, leaving them

In the trees. Chases birds across

Alfalfa. Their bodies make letter forms,

Change into wheels. Unable to land

They find shelter in the ditches,

Clutching weed stalks, rocking.


Walking past the cottonwoods,

I hear it clearly for an instant,

Your name. Impossible in such

Late weather, but there, nevertheless,

Or perhaps it is other, a scraping

Sound of branches against themselves,

Well above ground. Perhaps

This is not language, this time.

Perhaps I am wrong.


Wind inside my coat, through

The neck, forcing words from my mouth.

They make your name, as if I had

No choice, as if I were the desert,

Or, at best, a part of winter too,

Full of hands, waving, waving.



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