Beloved, In what other lives or lands Have I known your lips Your Hands Your Laughter brave

When love is a shimmering curtain Before a door of chance That leads to a world in question Wherein the macabrous dance Of bones that rattle in silence

There are some nights when sleep plays coy, aloof and disdainful. And all the wiles that I employ to win

A Rock, A River, A Tree Hosts to species long since depart… Marked the mastodon, The dinosaur, who left dried token… Of their sojourn here

Her arms semaphore fat triangles, Pudgy hands bunched on layered hip… Where bones idle under years of fa… And lima beans. Her jowls shiver in accusation

Tears The crystal rags Viscous tatters Of a worn-through soul Moans

One innocent spring your voice meant to me less than tires turning on a distant street. Your name, perhaps spoken,

Your skin like dawn Mine like musk One paints the beginning of a certain end. The other, the end of a

I’ve got the children to tend The clothes to mend The floor to mop The food to shop Then the chicken to fry

Give me your hand Make room for me to lead and follow you beyond this rage of poetry.

Curtains forcing their will against the wind, children sleep, exchanging dreams with seraphim. The city

I keep on dying again. Veins collapse, opening like the Small fists of sleeping Children. Memory of old tombs,

When you come to me, unbidden, Beckoning me To long-ago rooms, Where memories lie. Offering me, as to a child, an att…