The Walking
(Thanks to Jane Siberry)
Echo
from over the shoulder lifted by wind
when somebody went face down in a stream-----
How dreamily, further on, rapt, steadfast Narcissus
becomes more enamored with his own lovely reflection.
When night arrives, from the bottom, stars, cabbage-white,
unfold and rise.
Look, they seem to whisper. See.
Is the distance crying?
Bells peal.
Don't answer.
Walk mute, constant among strangers.
Pretend clarity when friends ask.
Fake assurance as knowledge
to what keeps repeating itself.
Above Eyes
Dreams exist in a sleepwalker's dilemma, a field of force.
How to ever retrieve, reel the entirety back, when still
in training wheels, though seventy-five?
Maybe there's been a mistake.
True, true enough, plans, speculations breed,
feed off of us, turn to nourishment or flotsam.
Which will intention get: accident claiming impulse,
a cause of digression, or the target vibrating on contact
as a lover is suddenly the index for every next thought?
No, be a besieged city.
Erect stones, sandbags of blankets,
then pretend waiting's only nominal.
Better forget. Clean the fridge.
So why do these breaths, these visitations, descend,
pelt, hook in anxious of children as if
the hovering afterwards
was the matter life depends on?
Instinct
This is painting in near dark,
not even eyesight for light.
More like fingertip probes.
More like radar lips.
Can you read me?
Over. Stand by.
By & by, baby, knowing only words,
I grow more illiterate, grow into a form
of clay, clay as flesh entering the paint.
It's symbiotic, each feeding, taking away,
open veins pulsing with the shapes of touch.
The shapes of touch are color,
energy depletion reaching a main circuit,
arcs of volts calm as lighting with thundering
echoes...
Make no mistake. The flashes are real.
So I give you this riddle, our gestures
of instinct homing in, a primitive source
dark may see the arch, the frame through