Playing Catch up for Now

These next few days will mostly be a matter of posting little things I've already written. (I can't think what else I would do with them.) After that, I'll begin to post new things.

Of Timothy at Bedtime

Wishing in the same breath
to stretch this playing another many more,
to have slow circles traced on your back,
you forget yourself a moment

And with the faintest shudder
Sleep's first sigh steals upon you

Red Red or Otherwise

Oh I would scarcely call my love a rose
He is rather too tall for a start - and a blush will not soon bend him
His toes are far curlier than one really finds in roses anymore, and
I know only a few roses with freckled shoulders, and
My love, he would never fade for blooming

Not a rose by any means, no.

He is no pretty dying thing
In truth, he is too lovely, and softer, far
Though he could not grow one thorn to guard with
And would not, however torn I have sometimes found his flesh to be. A rose?
What a peculiar notion.

Learning to Dance

Catch my waist, quick-catch my hands
Lead me swift into this
Awful fear of knowing
Grab my shoulders shake me only
Keep dancing
So I can' t recall
And the loose flesh at my sides is
No jiggling betrayal
And there are no better partners or smaller

Dare me to trust you, insist,
Fling me so sudden into trust
I remember you are kind or fall

"Now Deborah, Rebekah's nurse, died and was buried under the oak below Bethel.
So it was named Allon Bacuth." Genesis 35:8

How strange to weep at Allon Bacuth
Where is Deborah who keeps my tears?

I have left them in the oak-shade

Count them Deborah
Squalled feebly, fresh plucked from my mother
Shed soft for needle-pricked fingers, then
Softer into camel hide, shaggy and sand caked
For I was frightened by the desert
And we were not yet old women

All, Deborah
Spilled hot, each child torn from the safety of my body into humanity
Seared in bitter drops on my lips and neck, my children.

And mixed so often with yours upon my cheek.

Nor Should You be More - a pantoum

You cannot be more now
Do not ache for it, love
You mistake this present tearing
It is no greater slipping dream

Do not ache for it, love
Not alone, sweet skin all torn
It is no greater slipping dream
Though as much mine should it be borne

Not alone, sweet skin all torn
You mistake this present tearing
Though as much mine should it be borne
You cannot be more now

To Hydrel MFG. CO Burbank, Calif.
Meditations, Dreams, and Grievances of a Water Fixture

1. Untitled #1

They made me like a fountain,
in lime washed ceramic,
and I have been named "fountain,"
even as I dribble in on my statue's toes,
by kindlier fools, for whom I would play fountain
if I could bear the absurdity of failing

2. of blue water

Is it so vital my pool be sapphire hued,
That you paint it like chlorine in summer
When as many have dreamt of gray seas and green?

But look here, the waterline dips at midday
and betrays both stone and fantasy

3. Fountainhead

So very nearly right
and every bit as delicate
spinning your tilted orchids
true as any form,
Let us forget, for today,
our showerhead resemblances
and our toilet bowl similtudes

4. In Defense of my Muses, Particularly their Sweet, Solemn Faces

They would cast a grave countenance indeed
If rust and weather had not mottled brown
Their lips, cheeks, and noses
So Stupidish children begin to ask whether
They were perhaps plunged a moment ago into birthday cake

5. Untitled #2

Not so many pennies as I might wish
Not, then, so many wishers either

6. Of Transcendence

I would surge violent against this rock until
Bursting, it spilled me into the earth

I would seep in and well be water

Then at last, I could find myself a wooded stream
Where might flow deliberately