Learning to love differently is hard,
love with the hands wide open, love
with the doors banging on their hinges,
the cupboard unlocked, the wind
roaring and whimpering in the rooms
rustling the sheets and snapping the blinds
that thwack like rubber bands
in an open palm.
It hurts to love wide open
stretching the muscles that feel
as if they are made of wet plaster,
then of blunt knives, then
of sharp knives.
The twilight of your face,
the unknown bird in your voice,
draws me again to your eyes’ green vision,
your song about that longest
moment, a moon vulnerability,
a Natalie I saw alone,
at Carolyn’ s party years ago,
where you called me to your side,
and I held my heart, cupped in shadow,
as an offering to your smile,
our soft-spoken isolation.
They are a gift I have wanted again.
Wanted: One moment in mountains
when winter got so cold
the oil froze before it could burn.
I chopped ferns of hoarfrost from all the windows
and peered up at pines, a wedding cake
by a baker gone mad. Swirls by the thousand
shimmered above me until a cloud
lumbered over a ridge,
bringing the heavier white of more flurries.
I.
Stoplights edged the licorice street with ribbon,
neon embroidering wet sidewalks. She turned
into the driveway and leaped in the dark. A blackbird
perched on the bouncing twig of a maple, heard
her whisper, “Stranger, lover, the lost days are over.
While I walk from car to door, something inward opens
like four o’ clocks in rain. Earth, cold from autumn,
pulls me. I can’ t breathe the same
Darling, I leave you the forever unblooming
twig half-sunk in spring mud & the Nature that allows
such delicate & lasting atrocity.
Darling, darling, darling: my voice is a branch that would reach.
I leave you the ragged sky, once full of cloud & now
not. I leave you these things just as I leave
you: graceful passage from one something to the next.
Darling, even in this my voice dissipates
Love’s language is hyperbole, but whispered,
sibilant similes and promises sotto voce.
It’s easy to imagine you've misheard,
the form and content clash, create this weird
distortion like an echo or a tape delay.
Love’s language is hyperbole, but whispered.
On which do you place emphasis: The words?
Or the breath? The farfetched or the foreplay?
It’s easy to imagine you've misheard
when objectivity has disappeared
and your lover is getting further carried away.
Love’s language is hyperbole, but whispered
Heureux ceux qui ont la clim
Pendant la grande canicule.
Heureux those whose culs are cool.
Heureuse her and heureux him.
C’est la canicule qui hurle,
Ready to tear you limb from limb.
Heureux ceux qui ont la clim,
Cri-criant: ‘O turlútuturle! ’
La situation est grim,
The mise-en-scène a trifle burle.
À chaleur disons donc: ‘Ta gueule! ’
And keep ourselves amused and slim.
While the man is away
telling his wife
about the red-corseted woman,
the woman waits
on the queen-sized bed.
You'd expect her quiet
in the fist of a copper
statue. Half her face,
a shade of golden meringue,
the other half, the dark
of cattails. Her mouth even —
too straight, as if she doubted
her made decision, the way
women do. In her hands,
a yellow letter creased,
like her hunched back.
Her dress limp on a green chair.
In front, a man's satchel
and briefcase. On a dresser,
If no one ever marries me, —
And I don't see why they should,
For nurse says I'm not pretty,
And I'm seldom very good —
If no one ever marries me
I shan't mind very much;
I shall buy a squirrel in a cage,
And a little rabbit-hutch:
I shall have a cottage near a wood,
And a pony all my own,
And a little lamb quite clean and tame,
That I can take to town:
And when I'm getting really old, —
At twenty-eight or nine —
I shall buy a little orphan-girl
And bring her up as mine.
Come, O come, my life’s delight,
Let me not in languor pine!
Love loves no delay; thy sight,
The more enjoyed, the more divine:
O come, and take from me
The pain of being deprived of thee!
Thou all sweetness dost enclose,
Like a little world of bliss.
Beauty guards thy looks: the rose
In them pure and eternal is.
Come, then, and make thy flight
As swift to me, as heavenly light.
