Poems

Like a drink of water

I gave shade in summer.

My sap captured

the gold of evening and the pale

persistence of the river in the dove.

So inattentive were the glances,

You’ve said we’re each pockmarked like a golf course
with what can’t be said of us, bred in us,

isn’t our tasty piece of nature. But I tell you
I’ve stars, I’ve true blue depths, have learned to use

the loo, the crew, the whole slough of pill-popping
devices without you, your intelligent and pitiless graze.

When you hear that this is she
Of whose beauty it was sung,
She shall make the old man young,
Keep the middle age at stay,
And let nothing hide decay,
Till she be the reason why
All the world for love may die.

The cry of the cicada
Gives us no sign
That presently it will die.

The sheep are my thoughts
And my thoughts are all sensations.
I think with my eyes and my ears
And my hands and feet
And nostrils and mouth.

Why is it so sad to be awake at dawn?
It strips us of a gift so strange, so deep,
It can be remembered only in half-sleep,
Moments of drowsiness that gild and adorn

Night is their kingdom,
and this day, just breaking,
is their cloak of light.

Touching you I catch midnight
as moon fires set in my throat
I love you flesh into blossom
I made you
and take you made
into me.

searching for my soul in that childish drawing,
and I wished that I could do it all again.
I’d been so naïve when I made it,
playful like a child who’s forgotten

I hear a drum in my soul’s ear
coming from the depths of the stars.