Weather

Now footsteps on shingle. Make of it what you will. Seabirds roost
on the breakwaters, accustomed, of course, to twilight.
The spirit lamp in that house on the headland could easily fall and spill
and the fire burn all night. Some time later a subtle ghost,
yourself  in memory perhaps, might well set foot
up there amid clinker and smoke, the whole place silent and still
except you bring in the tic of cooling timbers, and then the birds in flight.

•

Now chains through gravel. Make of it what you will.

As I saw your face nearing
my face, snow fell through
a keyhole and opened the door.
We went inside and watched
windows wax green and gold.
Spring, we decided, was more
oppressive than winter with
its alyssum and clover
and the sheer weight of life
crowding us off the page.
We stayed in bed for years
and took our cures patiently
from each other’ s cups.
We read Bleak House and
stored our money in socks.
Nothing opened as we did.

Rain commenced, and wind did.

A crippled ship slid ashore.

Our swimmer’ s limbs went heavy.

The sand had been flattened.

The primary dune, the secondary dune, both leveled.

The maritime forest, extracted.

Every yard of the shore was shocked with jellyfish.

The blue pillow of the man o’ war empty in the afterlight.

The threads of the jellyfish, spent.

Disaster weirdly neatened the beach.

We cultivated the debris field.

Castaway trash, our treasure.

Jewel box, spoon ring, sack of rock candy.

The tint of the sky between sunset and night.

And wandering with you and your nephew
in that maze, half-lost — Madrid
of the Austrias — looking for Plaza of the Green

Cross where, days before you arrived,
an Opel with false plates was parked, its wheels
straddling the curb, and so the van

heading for the barracks that morning
had to slow to squeeze
past... Back at the hotel your mom

is holding up her gift — Amethyst, she says
admiring how light
when passing through a prism

I.

The Santa Anas, childlike and profound,
blanket me; I see the dust stirring the valley
and clouding downtown San Bernardino;
I feel the sting of your loss.

The black oak leaves, brittle, tumbling,
crack under my feet. Is your hand
touching the dryness of my lips?

You sing: "Don't sit, mountain-still,
a coyote skull whistling."

I tug at the skin on my wrist, trying
to peel off the seam, my stubbornness.

Wahiawa is still
a red dirt town
where the sticky smell
of pineapples
being lopped off
in the low-lying fields
rises to mix
with the minty leaves
of eucalyptus
in the bordering gulch.

We lived there
near the edge
where the orchids grew huge
as lanterns overnight
and the passion fruits rotted
on the vines
before they could be picked.

You’ re clean shaven in this country
where trees grow beards of moss,
where even bank tellers
look a little like banditos
in vests as pungent as sweatsuits.
Still, you prefer the vegetable air
to almost any other place on the map.
After the heart attack,
you considered Paris —
the flying buttresses,
the fractured light of its cathedrals;

Beyond the strings of water
clinging to the windowpane,

there were no cranes, just rain,
a sky blurred by wet glass,

a pond corrugated by raindrops,
and, inside, the smell of naphthalene bars,

a Victrola with a broken arm,
a spotty daguerreotype, a dusty crinoline —

O mildewed, seersucker suits
draped over vacant chairs.

Particulate as ash, new year's first snow falls
upon peaked roofs, car hoods, undulant hills,
in imitation of motion that moves the way

static cascades down screens when the cable
zaps out, persistent & granular with a flicker
of legibility that dissipates before it can be

interpolated into any succession of imagery.
One hour stretches sixty minutes into a field
of white flurry: hexagonal lattices of water

Let’ s not wrestle with water
anymore —
Enters until we flexible
in its acceptance
Persistent in entering
through green or brown windowpanes
jagged from years of sun

Lights out
across the street yr candle
dances still or
flashlight we send
signals
interrupted by slinging branches
Tonight is O. K. —
after all
you walk by the window
tip yr head at the orange sky blue lightning
partially our rainbow