OLD POEM

What terrifies me is the silence before you speak.
It fills my world and I find myself in the desert.
There is one horizon, of which I am the center.
My heartbeat fills the sky

HALO

under clarion rings
our fingers crawl
back to the caves
of our hands

a shattered keep now
moans in the wind
a soft fist is made

over which the city
resurrects
its elf

crowned
echo

ALL THINGS GOOD

Let me hear of all things good
crisp and icy firewood
chimney smoke warm puffing soft
from white rooftops sloped aloft
bells ring out through crystals falling
all things good gently calling

Whisper to me all good things
ruby wine glass toasting rings
tin cups clink on street corners cold
teddy bears wink at bed stories told
cold soaking mittens hang from wire
all good things thaw by the fire

And someone surely somewhere dies,
biting frost that freeze shut eyes

Let me hear of all good things
though winter bites and sharp sleet stings
and some of us won't hear the rings
when the New Year brings on all good things . . .

RECIDIVIST

for James Wright



The ashes that I rubbed into my eyes
are long gone now, look—
the standing man identified,
swallowed by a desolate forest.

Who can save the suicide
from drowning in an oasis—
those without fire and trapped
in an endless galaxy?

ENVOY

soldiers stand in a row,
like teeth in a skull
one of them has that daisy wheel stare
when the world falls in
a vulture's shadow

we think to escape
right into a wall of friendship
and are tracked down and cornered
by strangers known very well
and fondly remembered by friends misplaced
who must whisper the legends insistently

FLY

Scrying ebontips
glitter across elaborate tracing
in the matrices of meaning
while a muscle's grip contracts,
anenomes beckon in dark
currents on the ceiling.

It will be remembered
by a facet of an eye
and no android, even you,
can be programmed for that
memory passed on.

Like a platter of glass
in which a crowd is warped
and never shattered.

Until one day, when
the whorls of your digits
pass over the legends themselves
with such softness
they don't quite touch,
that you suffer the weight
of a dream's crush.

STILLED LIFE

a glance at the cluttered bureau reveals
still living ghosts amid disheveled icons.

A winged knight's candle
long burned out.

A praising salamander
thrown away his shadow.

A leaned cane with a brass
hammer for a head.

A gargoyle carved
in thought.

A phial of mandrake
with one drop left.

Some ribbons left hung
from valentines.

A small dream catcher
with a lock of horse's hair.

One sharp bull's horn
lying empty on its side.