Rave : Poems, 1975-1999

The Choir I walk and I rest while the eyes of my dead look through my own, inaudible hosannas greet the panorama charged serene and almost ultraviolet with so much witness. Holy the sea, the palpitating membrane divided into dazzling fields and whaledark by the sun. Holy the dark, pierced by late revelers and dawnbirds, the garbage truck suspended in shy light, the oystershell and crushed clam of the driveway, the dahlia pressed like lotus on its open palm. Holy the handmade and created side by side, the sapphire of their marriage, green flies and shit in condums in the crabshell rinsed by the buzzing tide. Holy the light-- the poison ivy livid in its glare, the gypsy moths festooning the pine barrens, the mating monarch butterflies between the chic boutiques. The mermaids handprint on the artificial reef. Holy the we, cast in the mermaid's image, smooth crotch of mystery and scale, inscrutable until divulged by god and sex into its gender, every touch a secret intercourse with angels as we walk proffered and taken. Their great wings batter the air, our retinas bloom silver spots like beacons. Better than silicone or graphite flesh absorbs the shock of the divine crash-landing. I roll my eyes back, skylights brushed by plumage of detail, the unrehearsed and minuscule, the anecdotal midnight themes of the carbon sea where we are joined: zinnia, tomato, garlic wreaths crowning the compost heap. Elegy Somebody left the world last night, I felt it so, last minute, last half-breath before the storm that hit all night last night drew back. Midmorning windows streaked with mud like sides of ears. How long the journey? Sails, the windowpanes the black thick tarp that kept the woodpile. Dry Southern wind, in minutes clothes bone-hard, clamped to the line. Clouds heaving in. The sky, the sky, who did arrive to kiss the eye behind the windswept sheet? Who was it, solo no longer, shy and desirous to be clean? What song arose, what crust between the lids spat and forgot? I woke, my fingers in my eyes <