Laurette At The Window

He rearranged her
Like the bottles and the apples
And the vases;
The red and gold dress, the white blouse,
The turbans,
Eyes open, closed,
Hard, languid,
Her body erect, reclining,
Alone, leaning into another woman, softly,
The black lock of a question mark
Across her forehead,
The thing he sought at last emerging
When the arranging abated
And she drew the green robe around herself
And rested in his only welcoming chair

Ah, you,
Who bent the living to your will,
Who brought light out of darkness
By dint of using darkness to paint light,
Who danced in color and
Who sang in unremitting line,
Who watched, with omniscient constancy,
For the instant existing beyond
Any truth man can compose,
How can it be?
How can it be
You were denied the moment
When she strode to the casement window
Unposed, undraped,
And blandly looked across the roofs
As men below her gaped?

A Taste of Ashes

Henry Miller, writing, as he often did,
Of girls who plied their trade,
Said sometimes he would take one on
Out of loneliness and boredom
Although it left the taste of ashes

Of course, he was young then
And so needed the desperate burn
Of unloving penetration to sense
The decay consuming him and her,
The slow smolder and its waste

Ah, Henry, as you grow older
You will know the constant presence
Of that taste
All fire to ash, all iron into rust
All things finally falling, failing, dust

And, yet, you will be saved
By hope, insoucience, gaeity, and joy,
By memory and words,
And even by the fears that haunt your dreams
And send you into streets on sleepless nights

Clarity

And as the sun rose
And earth and air and water warmed,
The silt of gray fog
Dissolved into translucent haze

And then the dead tree
I had seen from across the lake
Lifted its face to me
And, turning, bounded up the hill

Even now, just now
Our eyes look into other eyes
And we need not wait
To stand in awed and sacred gaze

North Woods

A cold October morning,
Following the rustle of the dogs
As they chase the scent
Of where the grouse and woodcock
Used to be

Passing the deer beds
In the rolling field
And the stalk of a tree
Rubbed naked of bark
By some compulsive, absent elk

Spying the wild and massive tangle
Of a vacant eagle's nest
Lopsided from its own weight;
Finding in the road the furtive prints
Of a fox with a secret and a plan

The substance of things hoped for;
The evidence of things not seen

Outside

Outside, in night, the startled beat of wings
The lake's cool breath disquieting the trees
The sometime rustle of nocturnal things
The hum of thunder carried on the breeze
The water idly pawing at the shore
Inside, at rest, we listen still for more

Outside, in night, the sirens' urgent scream
The boozy laughter from the closing bar
The wailing beggar, shaken from a dream
The thudding music oozing from a car
The dustbin navigations of the poor
Inside, at rest, we listen still for more

Outside, in night, the reconciled note
The crashing sweet abandonment of swords
The choruses of angels in full throat
The rushing sweep of unimagined chords
The sound of someone waiting at the door
Inside, at rest, we listen still for more

Drought

We talked about the rain as though it sat
In some adjoining town, perhaps too drunk
To know that we had work we needed done,
Long overdue, a no good sodden sot,
The crumpled rent check wadded in his vest

And when it wouldn't come and wouldn't come
We couldn't do and couldn't raise or pay;
Farms clawed with tidy rows of brittle stalks;
Vast fields of spiky weeds rising from dust;
The twisted fruit trees barren of their yield.

There is loss, too, in that which never comes.

Discourses

The day that my grandfather died
I sat on the loose-shingled roof
Atop the beaten shed that stood
Behind his gray and gabled house

And watched the sun burn hot and hard
Just over tree line past the park
Until the only substance left
Was vapor purple, orange, and gold

Escorted off by silent hosts

My first extended chat with ghosts