from Landscape With Aenigma
Sally Kirk Road
An ember glows in the dusk.
A blackbird calls from the meadow’s edge.
A dry whiff of leaves.
Is it those warm arms you still long for,
that gaze that held you close & listening,
those lips trembling like a wound?
Or is it merely the forgotten dreams
in which that gaze could still have lived,
in which the dreamers wake
still trembling, but safe now
in the coded mysteries of breath,
a candle’s steady dripping on the bare table,
while outside, constellations
crash against the shore?
Prolegomenon
Certain thoughts cannot be turned back from.
Certain syllables.
Certain marks on a stone.
To lift one’s hand
brings a shadow crashing to the earth.
To breath at all
spins universes into night.
At a certain depth, the city is seen to float.
Later, by the window,
dawn staring in like a skull.
Waiting
Afternoon clicks like a filter
over the lens of light.
The shadow of an unseen tree
polishes the courtyard wall.
A row of locked bikes glitters.
Cobblestones & moss.
I will not cast aspersions.
Nor will I deny what I have seen.
When evening comes &
everything changes
I will be waiting here
with my hat held out over the
silence, singing, sung.