Again with spring
she wore light colours
and with gentle steps
again with spring
again in summer
she was smiling.
Among fresh blossoms
breast naked to the veins
beyond the dry night
beyond the white old men
debating quietly
whether it would be better
to give up the keys
or to pull the rope
and hang from the noose
to leave empty bodies
there where souls couldn’ t endure
there where the mind couldn’ t catch up
and knees buckled.
spring came /
the same way winter left
& summer will come
& summer will leave; slowly
/ when no one's expecting it
when people are tired of waiting
like waiting for welfare checks /
a long wait/ a slow wait
the windows are open
but butterflies don't fly in
to display a sense of love
the green of Jesus
is breaking the ground
and the sweet
smell of delicious Jesus
is opening the house and
the dance of Jesus music
has hold of the air and
the world is turning
in the body of Jesus and
the future is possible
All these years I overlooked them in the
racket of the rest, this
symbiotic splash of plant and fungus feeding
on rock, on sun, a little moisture, air —
tiny acid-factories dissolving
salt from living rocks and
eating them.
Here they are, blooming!
Trail rock, talus and scree, all dusted with it:
rust, ivory, brilliant yellow-green, and
cliffs like murals!
Huge panels streaked and patched, quietly
with shooting-stars and lupine at the base.
It’ s a little-known fact that God’ s headgear —
A magician’ s collapsible silk top hat,
When viewed from Earth, from the bottom up —
Is, sub specie aeternitatis,
A pluperfect halo, both circle and square,
And a premonition of this truth
Spurred on an ancient philosopher,
Anaxagoras, to make numerous vain
Attempts to approximate the circle
Of his concerns with the square of the cell
He was jailed in for impiety.
Doomed calculations which God acknowledged
Thinking of rain clouds that rose over the city
on the first day of the year
in the same month
I consider that I have lived daily and with
eyes open and ears to hear
these years across from St Vincent’ s Hospital
above whose roof those clouds rose
I run high in my body
on the road toward sea.
I fall in love. The things
the wind is telling me.
The yellow sky quiet
in her quiet dress.
Old birds sending news
from the reddish hills.
& the one hawk flying
in the distance overhead.
That hawk is what
the wind says. In love
with the heaving
of my peacock chest,
with my lungs, two wings,
such flying things,
but mine for now, just for now
as I open my stride
above the good, dirt road,
fall in love with the mustard
Every town with black Catholics has a St. Peter Claver’ s.
My first was nursery school.
Miss Maturin made us fold our towels in a regulation square and nap on army cots.
No mother questioned; no child sassed.
In blue pleated skirts, pants, and white shirts,
we stood in line to use the open toilets
and conserved light by walking in darkness.
Unsmiling, mostly light-skinned, we were the children of the middle class, preparing to take our parents’ places in a world that would demand we fold our hands and wait.
One rusty horseshoe hangs on a nail
above the door, still losing its luck,
and a work-collar swings, an empty
old noose. The silence waits, wild to be
broken by hoofbeat and heavy
harness slap, will founder but remain;
while, outside, above the stable,
eight, nine, now ten buzzards swing low
in lazy loops, a loose black warp
of patience, bearing the blank sky
like a pall of wind on mourning
wings. But the bones of this place are
long picked clean. Only the hayrake's
ribs still rise from the rampant grasses.
Because in medieval Italian it meant “room”
I tied the curtains at their elbows with
what could have been honor cords or worse
yet, a belt from the 60s, so hideous were the
tassels that were dancing a little tarantella
after I had propped the windows and the wind
had carried in the song the rubbing trees
were making, without any accompaniment,
mind you, from a tambourine, although the bells
of the occasional sleigh played that part,
while I waited for the vixen and their shameless
