What we plant –

what we plant and when we plant it

seems to matter more and more

what we stake and what we hunger commit

to beauty; it is from lore

we take our cue to stand among the files

of soldiers waiting here for war

a sudden instance of unwanted bile

here at yearning’s steadfast core;

are you a victim, pained, and slow to start?

can you overcome this ravening earth?

when wheels grind out their purpose, part

worship, part terror, what will you rehearse?

i have seen you coming, seen you all

there but for the breaking of your fall

what we wish –

angry young kids eyeing the doorknob – is it here we reinvent ourselves only to find

we’ve always been this way, always have structured our Glances severely

in Order to find mute reasons for remaining Still, our Silence not taken for Granted

but held forth as some kind of Justice?

(It is not what we meant to do when we straddled the lines to come across as

more Vulnerable than we actually Were) –, these children

who gainsay your altitude to arrive en masse seem oblivious of their poverty, they

who would dance all night as if on fire holding hands and waving their arms

at the long tall trees bending through their graceful minuets, these

girls and boys searching out what hidden meanings await them in the dark, shadows

that undergo timed explosions of color and light, this vivid reimagining

of Youth for us a Necessity, a romance of pure thought

and sudden-held Emotion – Where will we Stand, unbowed

by the Wind, our happenstance no Contrivance but a worked

idea ground to dirt in our coarse hands

and held out for

more than we’ve been given? – Schisms

urged to Unity, edging

out beyond the Earth to float freely in the Air; our

hedged-in geometry of Desire

Obscured by Mists; the milk of some

Mother’s enchantment; We

hold Ourselves in Awe as if Witness to some

great Tragedy – Our purpling bruises

the Remnant of a Vicious beheading of Ideas; – Can

we halt our Minds, instill in Ourselves a quiet Calm while

the deer Spring startled in quick ballads

across the Lawn?

Instep is inscape, She thought, the

inner Profile of

Plenitude and Discovery – She the Victim

of hurricane Winds holding

Still in her breast, this heritage; the

Overture

of an unkempt Symphony – Why

do we Wind across the Page in leaps and bounds only

to be Silenced by Solitude – It is here, preoccupied, We are alone

but hardly aware of our Loneliness – Sparrows

flit in threes and fours beneath

our impoverished Skies to arrive, Innocent, at

the branch; We

wait below, counting the hours of Our indecision, our

halfhearted thrust at

irony

Or inception – We laugh away the heady Sorrows

which tie us ankle-to-wrist, front-

to-back here

to attain a yawning birth in Spring’s incision –

*

Coming to terms with Christ --

Impassioned, Fragile, down

at the Mouth; bitter Wine, Vinegar of

a pure Sort – marathon

ascetic in the Mountain you

battled your Devil

for forty days, they said – What

kind of Man

are you? – “Get

behind Me, Satan,” is all you said

and it was Enough –

You would

leave this land

heavy-hearted our blood flowing

in your Veins you cry Salt tears looking

upon Us – What manner

of Man are you to be when you

come back

to this Earth here where we await you

prayerfully holding our hands to the Sky?

What is the Sword for?

(Some say if there wasn’t a Christ,

we’d have to invent One); He

is a ghost we acclaim as Saviour, the

suffering virgin burnished by the Sun sweating

blood

this Carpenter’s Child who walks on Water

under Circling doves

above the Sea

his beard grown long in the Wind,

this Nazarite, student

of books and stars the Careful

mapping

out of a Life before Him here

where

the desert Sands wash away

pious longing

in our Hearts – We

are master and Slave to his

will – he who would redeem

us with

his blood an aging poet angling

for Conversion –

in the sand

in the dark, subterranean world of water spilling over moss, rocks bleeding,

there is a harmony of justice, replete, an iron vase broken in the fist,

the hard stare coming slowly, inching past despair to

some irrefutable union, a right unbroken, heralded still as one who survives,

is lethal, can convince

beyond a doubt, instill, enact, forestall . . .

I heard her in the darkness, moaning the one syllable she

could contrive, twirling around her own unique maypole

with blood burning, eyes opaque and

blurred, shuddering, freezing -- She saw me, the one there,

in the distance, ironing his smile, leaving

off where she began, telling her amid the frenzy

of her lies, her joys, her sudden blossom, about

and not because, of all the things that would be told

his had utmost in her horizon the beam of

light fulfilled, occasional, divine -- I heard her there, in the darkness,

counting, late, iridescent,

shallow, blue -- She was the mute goddess of the moment,

balancing on a pin, devouring raw the

uproar surrounding her . . ..

She had to give in, had to hold it close so that it wouldn't die,

so that it could thrive in the murk, this baby, this infant straddling life,

choosing its words with a sudden glory, this eye shining,

that one closed, all it would be revealed in slow blood circles

of lined intensity, the bursting instance

of a glance gone haywire, these the bold rocks shattering

the creek surface, shimmering in the

sun's glare, occult, aware . . .

I began life as an urchin, a treesprout gone wild,

some unstilled moment of deliverance,

these the icons glowing in the mist, my fortune

would play out on the craggy beach, I would hold

her there in my embrace, sheltering her body against the wind,

my sore feet inching slowly across

the rock, there to dive in, there to surrender, this day

the holiest as this is the day I died, I died

again . . .

Is there a man alive that can match me, she asked?

Is there somewhere the conjoined

spouse pining for an unknown Sister, a breath on the neck,

gold chains in the hand, the sutured

instant of cold-love in a barren world?

It counts. It is the One to be. (That is, she will hold me

against my Will and I will

scratch and kick until I'm spent,

unglued and unattainable.) She hit me in the face with the back

of her hand and I collapsed,

groaning at her feet, this She-goddess, this Night-Mistress, all black in

spades, imprisoned and forlorn,

these the minute-toes grasping in the Sand, uncoiled, nervous, bare . . .