WIDOW WEEDS
Acanthus leaves spiral up the colonnade.
Drapes are thrown open and the shadow
of a young man flashes across the patio.
Broken husks are scattered on the flagstones.
A dry petal is caught in the old spider web.
Tomorrow, the gardener sweeps the stairs clean.
Chrysanthemums announce the seasons change.
Yellow, white and rust, they puff into winter
when the skin of the world is wind, rain, and ice.
Dare we trust the traitor? Tear up his letters
the way autumn tears up the letters of summer.
Throw them on the road and across the pond.
Everyone is called to the dance between our legs.
We skip in and out of water and blood,
to slip away like shade from a passing cloud.
Father and son walk along the beach. He shows
the boy how to skip stones, then carries him in his
arms back to the car. Now, show us the bones.
Give it up, Methuselah. There is no meter
with the young. They have their own music.
You have light or winter's white parenthesis.
Hair falling, teeth falling, shadows falling,
but still he imagines hands that grace his flesh
and make it quiet, then hold him as he falls.
Insistent but low, autumn sunlight filters through
trembling cottonwoods. Some translucent green
remains. Don't be fooled--the undertaker will wait.
Just stir the embers and the fires flare up--
still burning for his midnight watch,
still burning on his grid of bones.
"Keep Out" says the sign above the bitter heart.
He wasted all his work on liars and fools.
"Come In" says the sign above the ready grave.
Listen to a bird sing in the fog. The wish to live
is the first prayer the angel of the harvest hears.
It rings like chimes above a monastery pool.
Maybe we slough off imperfection like a snakeskin.
Then, mother no longer means milk and father no
longer means smoke--light will mix with light.
No, he did not hold him in flannel through the night
of storms. Instead, one blizzard followed another.
The poet of ice remains better in print than in bed.
Old lovers who turn away like ships close to shore
may be waiting in the rusted light--their hands open
with the emptiness left for safe keeping with us.
Please, take away the tree-snagged moon.
Take away the rustle of dry leaves, and the walk
from the library. Take away the scar of his profile.
Quiet! The love that dares not speak its name
still haunts the balcony. That rattle we hear
is the same chain of darkness that binds us all.
Rain and remembrance are the veteran's burden.
Ahead is the bridge everyone must cross.
The only battle now is with his heart.
Shutters open to October's smoky light.
A moment's silence suspends the landscape.
The dream comes back. He tastes him again.
Tishrei is the month when the world began.
This is when the falling starts: the fall of leaves,
the fall of letters and then the fall of snow.
Under a canopy of golden elms children play tag.
The blonde boy falls from mother, the freckled girl
falls from father and from divorce knives fall.
Vice of light, do not pinch so much today.
Jerry says he sees hanging from his rope
over to the other side and there is nothing.
Wreckage of summer. Wreckage of Adam and Eve.
The leaves fall from withered gardens in the sky.
No reach is long enough to catch what falls.
Xylophone gurgle of the fountain.
Cool stones of the ledge. Coins glint in a pool
like his eyes first seen across the room.
Yellow leaves scatter among the red.
Look at me. I come this way, just like you,
limping, with my pocket full of sins.
Zachariah! God re-members! The hip bone
is connected to the thigh bone--desire
is weld to life. Praise the work of the Lord.