Reclaiming this soul fragment, the sad and angry girl who had so many wounds.




 I love you so much, little one. We don't have to hurt, anymore.

Psalm and Lament
by Donald Justice

In memory of my mother (1897-1974)
Hialeah, Florida

The clocks are sorry, the clocks are very sad.
One stops, one goes on striking the wrong hours.

And the grass burns terribly in the sun,
The grass turns yellow secretly at the roots.

Now suddenly the yard chairs look empty, the sky looks empty,
The sky looks vast and empty.

Out on Red Road the traffic continues; everything continues.
Nor does memory sleep; it goes on.

Out spring the butterflies of recollection,
And I think that for the first time I understand

The beautiful ordinary light of this patio
And even perhaps the dark rich earth of a heart.

(The bedclothes, they say, had been pulled down.
I will not describe it. I do not want to describe it.

No, but the sheets were drenched and twisted.
They were the very handkerchiefs of grief.)

Let summer come now with its schoolboy trumpets and fountains.
But the years are gone, the years are finally over.

And there is only
This long desolation of flower-bordered sidewalks

That runs to the corner, turns, and goes on,
That disappears and goes on

Into the black oblivion of a neighborhood and a world
Without billboards or yesterdays.

Sometimes a sad moon comes and waters the roof tiles.
But the years are gone. There are no more years.

I am no poet,
only a lover in secret.
I cannot tell it like it is,
only obliquely,
through the lens of metaphor.

"They took it from us... My Precioussssssssssssssssssssssss!"

I cannot help but say these things at this moment. Once again, my teaching skill or marked lack thereof has borne more little earthquakes in my life.
I again wish to assemble a plan for dying.

I am attended by experts who inform me of my own condition!

Hello, world.
Things looking a little tight lately.
Night must have its day, I say.
Sorry, that means rain, sometimes.

What does it profit a soul
to gain only itself
and lose everything else?

POEMS I LIKE

Willow Poem
William Carlos Williams

It is a willow when summer is over,
a willow by the river
from which no leaf has fallen nor
bitten by the sun
turned orange or crimson.
The leaves cling and grow paler,
swing and grow paler
over the swirling waters of the river
as if loth to let go,
they are so cool, so drunk with
the swirl of the wind and of the river --
oblivious to winter,
the last to let go and fall
into the water and on the ground.



Complete Destruction
William Carlos Williams

It was an icy day.
We buried the cat,
then took her box
and set fire to it
in the back yard.
Those fleas that escaped
earth and fire
died by the cold.

The Desolate Field
William Carlos Williams

Vast and grey, the sky
is a simulacrum
to all but him whose days
are vast and grey and --
In the tall, dried grasses
a goat stirs
with nozzle searching the ground.
My head is in the air
but who am I . . . ?
-- and my heart stops amazed
at the thought of love
vast and grey
yearning silently over me.

Love Song
William Carlos Williams

I lie here thinking of you:---

the stain of love
is upon the world!
Yellow, yellow, yellow
it eats into the leaves,
smears with saffron
the horned branched the lean
heavily
against a smooth purple sky!
There is no light
only a honey-thick stain
that drips from leaf to leaf
and limb to limb
spoiling the colors
of the whole world-

you far off there under
the wine-red selvage of the west!


The Red Wheelbarrow
William Carlos Williams

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

Postcards
Margaret Atwood

I'm thinking about you. What else can I say?
The palm trees on the reverse
are a delusion; so is the pink sand.
What we have are the usual
fractured coke bottles and the smell
of backed-up drains, too sweet,
like a mango on the verge
of rot, which we have also.
The air clear sweat, mosquitoes
& their tracks; birds & elusive.

Time comes in waves here, a sickness, one
day after the other rolling on;
I move up, it's called
awake, then down into the uneasy
nights but never
forward. The roosters crow
for hours before dawn, and a prodded
child howls & howls
on the pocked road to school.
In the hold with the baggage
there are two prisoners,
their heads shaved by bayonets, & ten crates
of queasy chicks. Each spring
there's race of cripples, from the store
to the church. This is the sort of junk
I carry with me; and a clipping
about democracy from the local paper.

Outside the window
they're building the damn hotel,
nail by nail, someone's
crumbling dream. A universe that includes you
can't be all bad, but
does it? At this distance
you're a mirage, a glossy image
fixed in the posture
of the last time I saw you.
Turn you over, there's the place
for the address. Wish you were
here. Love comes
in waves like the ocean, a sickness which goes on
& on, a hollow cave
in the head, filling & pounding, a kicked ear.


Night Poem
Margaret Atwood

There is nothing to be afraid of,
it is only the wind
changing to the east, it is only
your father the thunder
your mother the rain

In this country of water
with its beige moon damp as a mushroom,
its drowned stumps and long birds
that swim, where the moss grows
on all sides of the trees
and your shadow is not your shadow
but your reflection,

your true parents disappear
when the curtain covers your door.
We are the others,
the ones from under the lake
who stand silently beside your bed
with our heads of darkness.
We have come to cover you
with red wool,
with our tears and distant whispers.

Your rock in the rain's arms,
the chilly ark of your sleep,
while we wait, your night
father and mother,
with our cold hands and dead flashlight,
knowing we are only
the wavering shadows thrown
by one candle, in this echo
you will hear twenty years later.

This Is A Photograph Of Me

It was taken some time ago.
At first it seems to be
a smeared
print: blurred lines and grey flecks
blended with the paper;

then, as you scan
it, you see in the left-hand corner
a thing that is like a branch: part of a tree
(balsam or spruce) emerging
and, to the right, halfway up
what ought to be a gentle
slope, a small frame house.

In the background there is a lake,
and beyond that, some low hills.

(The photograph was taken
the day after I drowned.

I am in the lake, in the center
of the picture, just under the surface.

It is difficult to say where
precisely, or to say
how large or small I am:
the effect of water
on light is a distortion

but if you look long enough,
eventually
you will be able to see me.)

Margaret Atwood

The Sad Mother

Sleep, sleep, my beloved,
without worry, without fear,
although my soul does not sleep,
although I do not rest.

Sleep, sleep, and in the night
may your whispers be softer
than a leaf of grass,
or the silken fleece of lambs.

May my flesh slumber in you,
my worry, my trembling.
In you, may my eyes close
and my heart sleep.

Gabriela Mistral

Pine Forest

Let us go now into the forest.
Trees will pass by your face,
and I will stop and offer you to them,
but they cannot bend down.
The night watches over its creatures,
except for the pine trees that never change:
the old wounded springs that spring
blessed gum, eternal afternoons.
If they could, the trees would lift you
and carry you from valley to valley,
and you would pass from arm to arm,
a child running
from father to father.

Gabriela Mistral

Wanting The Moon

Not the moon. A flower
on the other side of the water.

The water sweeps past in flood,
dragging a whole tree by the hair,

a barn, a bridge. The flower
sings on the far bank.

Not a flower, a bird calling
hidden among the darkest trees, music

over the water, making a silence
out of the brown folds of the river's cloak.

The moon. No, a young man walking
under the trees. There are lanterns

among the leaves.
Tender, wise, merry,

his face is awake with its own light,
I see it across the water as if close up.

A jester. The music rings from his bells,
gravely, a tune of sorrow,

I dance to it on my riverbank.

Denise Levertov


To A Cat

Mirrors are not more silent
nor the creeping dawn more secretive;
in the moonlight, you are that panther
we catch sight of from afar.
By the inexplicable workings of a divine law,
we look for you in vain;
More remote, even, than the Ganges or the setting sun,
yours is the solitude, yours the secret.
Your haunch allows the lingering
caress of my hand. You have accepted,
since that long forgotten past,
the love of the distrustful hand.
You belong to another time. You are lord
of a place bounded like a dream.

Jorge Luis Borges

History Of The Night

Throughout the course of the generations
men constructed the night.
At first she was blindness;
thorns raking bare feet,
fear of wolves.
We shall never know who forged the word
for the interval of shadow
dividing the two twilights;
we shall never know in what age it came to mean
the starry hours.
Others created the myth.
They made her the mother of the unruffled Fates
that spin our destiny,
they sacrificed black ewes to her, and the cock
who crows his own death.
The Chaldeans assigned to her twelve houses;
to Zeno, infinite words.
She took shape from Latin hexameters
and the terror of Pascal.
Luis de Leon saw in her the homeland
of his stricken soul.
Now we feel her to be inexhaustible
like an ancient wine
and no one can gaze on her without vertigo
and time has charged her with eternity.

And to think that she wouldn't exist
except for those fragile instruments, the eyes.

Jorge Luis Borges

First Memory

Long ago, I was wounded. I lived
to revenge myself
against my father, not
for what he was--
for what I was: from the beginning of time,
in childhood, I thought
that pain meant
I was not loved.
It meant I loved.

Louise Glück

Love Poem

There is always something to be made of pain.
Your mother knits.
She turns out scarves in every shade of red.
They were for Christmas, and they kept you warm
while she married over and over, taking you
along. How could it work,
when all those years she stored her widowed heart
as though the dead come back.
No wonder you are the way you are,
afraid of blood, your women
like one brick wall after another.

Louise Glück


The Cat In The Kitchen
(For Donald Hall)

Have you heard about the boy who walked by
The black water? I won't say much more.
Let's wait a few years. It wanted to be entered.
Sometimes a man walks by a pond, and a hand
Reaches out and pulls him in.

There was no
Intention, exactly. The pond was lonely, or needed
Calcium, bones would do. What happened then?

It was a little like the night wind, which is soft,
And moves slowly, sighing like an old woman
In her kitchen late at night, moving pans
About, lighting a fire, making some food for the cat.

Robert Bly

XVII (I do not love you...)
Translated by Stephen Tapscott
Pablo Neruda

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

Tonight I Can Write
translated by W.S. Merwin
Pablo Neruda

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example, 'The night is starry
and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.'

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is starry and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight tries to find her as though to bring her closer.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. As she was before my kisses.
Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.

Suicide Note
Anne Sexton

"You speak to me of narcissism but I reply that it is a matter of my life" - Artaud

"At this time let me somehow bequeath all the leftovers to my daughters and their
daughters" - Anonymous

Better,
despite the worms talking to
the mare's hoof in the field;
better,
despite the season of young girls
dropping their blood;
better somehow
to drop myself quickly
into an old room.
Better (someone said)
not to be born
and far better
not to be born twice
at thirteen
where the boardinghouse,
each year a bedroom,
caught fire.

Dear friend,
I will have to sink with hundreds of others
on a dumbwaiter into hell.
I will be a light thing.
I will enter death
like someone's lost optical lens.
Life is half enlarged.
The fish and owls are fierce today.
Life tilts backward and forward.
Even the wasps cannot find my eyes.

Yes,
eyes that were immediate once.
Eyes that have been truly awake,
eyes that told the whole story—
poor dumb animals.
Eyes that were pierced,
little nail heads,
light blue gunshots.

And once with
a mouth like a cup,
clay colored or blood colored,
open like the breakwater
for the lost ocean
and open like the noose
for the first head.

Once upon a time
my hunger was for Jesus.
O my hunger! My hunger!
Before he grew old
he rode calmly into Jerusalem
in search of death.

This time
I certainly
do not ask for understanding
and yet I hope everyone else
will turn their heads when an unrehearsed fish jumps
on the surface of Echo Lake;
when moonlight,
its bass note turned up loud,
hurts some building in Boston,
when the truly beautiful lie together.
I think of this, surely,
and would think of it far longer
if I were not… if I were not
at that old fire.

I could admit
that I am only a coward
crying me me me
and not mention the little gnats, the moths,
forced by circumstance
to suck on the electric bulb.
But surely you know that everyone has a death,
his own death,
waiting for him.
So I will go now
without old age or disease,
wildly but accurately,
knowing my best route,
carried by that toy donkey I rode all these years,
never asking, "Where are we going?"
We were riding (if I'd only known)
to this.

Dear friend,
please do not think
that I visualize guitars playing
or my father arching his bone.
I do not even expect my mother's mouth.
I know that I have died before—
once in November, once in June.
How strange to choose June again,
so concrete with its green breasts and bellies.
Of course guitars will not play!
The snakes will certainly not notice.
New York City will not mind.
At night the bats will beat on the trees,
knowing it all,
seeing what they sensed all day.

Funeral Blues
W.H. Auden

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.


Lullaby
W.H. Auden

Lay your sleeping head, my love,
Human on my faithless arm;
Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave
Proves the child ephemeral:
But in my arms till break of day
Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guility, but to me
The entirely beautiful.

Soul and body have no bounds:
To lovers as they lie upon
Her tolerant enchanted slope
In their ordinary swoon,
Grave the vision Venus sends
Of supernatural sympathy,
Universal love and hope;
While abstract insight wakes
Among the glaciers and the rocks
The hermit's sensual ecstasy.

Certainty, fidelity
On the stroke of midnight pass
Like vibrations of a bell,
And fashionable madmen raise
Their pedantic boring cry:
Every farthing of the cost,
All the dreaded cards foretell,
Shall be paid, but from this night
Not a whisper, not a thought,
Not a kiss nor look be lost.

Beauty, midnight, vision dies:
Let the winds of dawn that blow
Softly round your dreaming head
Such a day of sweetness show
Eye and knocking heart may bless,
Find your mortal world enough;
Noons of dryness see you fed
By the involuntary powers,
Nights of insult let you pass
Watched by every human love.

If You Forget Me
Pablo Neruda
I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.

Which Member of the Endless Are You?

I feel so small
and humbled
in my pain.

The world is a vastness
I cannot touch.

HOPING YOU'LL CALL

I have sunk into my ergonomic chair.
The neighbors have returned from work.
Their little dogs yap happy songs at the scent of them.

NIGHTMARE

Darkness clothes me:
I drown in my tears.

MORNING [2]

Night melts:
sunlight spills into my room.

MORNING

Night melts away:
Light spreads like water into my room.

IT'S A PITY

It is your loss
my love
my whole being
you have refused.

PHONE CALL INTERRUPTS A MEETING

Oh, hello.
I'm sorry, I'm in the middle of a meeting right now.
Do you need to talk?
I'm okay.
(Trying not to kill myself like last week
Now there are only scars)
I'm okay,
Yes, call me tomorrow.
(Perhaps you had hoped to talk longer tonight?
I know I did.)

But there are things to be done.
Things have to be said.
Things have to be finished.
Goodbye.

LAST CHOICE
8.May.2002

No one has to know.

That is why I have to succeed,
to cut the vein without regret,
except perhaps that some of them
will blame him for this.

But it was my choice.
My choice alone.

It was the end or nothing,
and it is far easier
to embrace the darkness
than endure the light
in his eyes.

KISS

I want to feed upon your mouth
to drink from your well of words and drown
in the sweet, sweet river of desire,
to dive into your very being,

to drink from your well of words and drown
to plunge into the oceans of your eyes,
to dive into your very being,
to burn from deep within,

to plunge into the oceans of your eyes
to feel your name etched upon my lips,
to burn from deep within,
tasting nothing but your sweetness,

to feel your name etched upon my lips
I want to sing into your mouth,
tasting nothing but your sweetness,
lost in the abyss of your love.

I want to run away,
to hide,
to let my skin fall off my soul.

My heart is an open wound.
I want to let the blood bleed.

I want to melt into my tears
and water the world.

SECRET

I keep a cutter blade
in my drawer,
just in case.

CANDLES FOR THE DEAD

I light candles for the dead,
I speak to them of the great Light.
I speak to them in my head-

after all, they aren't fed
where they're kept in eternal night.
That's why I light candles for the dead.

I tell them things often left unsaid-
the sort said after a fight;
but I only speak to them in my head.

They feed on my words like bread.
They are always in my sight.
And so I speak to them in my head.

But sometimes (only sometimes) I think instead,
what if it were me keeping quiet?
but then I light my candles for the dead,
or they'd speak to me in my head.

MOTHER IN RED revised

You are a flower in bloom, Mother.
You startle me with the color
of your laughter in the depths of night.

Darkness brings us no relief
from the heat,
but you do not waver, only smile.

You are a flower in bloom, Mother,
a flower standing tall in the night,
who will not bend, or bow, or break, but blooms.

CONFESSION revised

Your words leave me
naked,
my soul's scars exposed,
scars from where I cut myself
before,
wanting to leech my body
of the agony of love.


Your gaze leaves me
lost,
lost in the oceans of those
eyes of yours,
drifting like a petal
in the water wide and deep.

Your breath on my skin leaves me
cold,
cold in the wake of your words,
and I shiver,
but I stand here naked, willingly,
before you


that I might give myself
to the poetry of your hands.

CONFESSION

Your words on the page leave me
naked,
my soul's scars exposed,
scars from where I cut myself
before,
wanting to leech my body
of the agony of love.

Your stare leaves me
naked.
I see oceans in those eyes of yours,
oceans wide and deep,
pale jewels that glimer
in the afternoon sun's fading light,
glimmers that hint at the fire and steel beneath.

Your breath on my skin leaves me
cold,
cold in the wake of your words,

and though I shiver,
I stand here naked,
willingly,
before you
that I might give
myself
to the poetry of your hands.

LOVER LOST

Today,
I walked home alone.

We used to walk home together—he and I.
The nights were ours
as we talked in soft voices,
as our steps covered inches, feet, kilometers,
as the sun died its orange death,
as the stars came out.

You'd think we were the only people on the road
from the way we talked,
from the way we didn't talk,
just walking slowly, as though content, beside each other.

These days,
I walk home alone.
I talk to no one.
Now I see how dust covers everything in the summer heat.
My feet kick up little puffs of dust,
and I'm no longer sure which way to go
with all this dust in my eyes.

MOTHER IN RED

You are a flower in bloom, Mother.
You surprise me with the color
of your laughter in the depths of night.

How it rains, Mama, how it rains!
And yet still you smile and laugh
all throughout the day.

You are a flower in bloom, Mother,
a flower standing tall in the wind,
who will not bend, or bow, or break, but blooms.

FATHER IN BLUE

You left us one night.
Shadows loomed large on my wall
until dawn's light melted them away.

Did you know the air hung still
after you were gone?
The scent of your cologne has faded.

"Papa" is not a word
but a ghost in the house
who walks our rooms,

who tucks us in,
who leaves the toilet seat up,
who reigns in the empty chair at the table's head.

HUNGER

Oh, how you hunger
for tastes to tempt the tongue,
hurrying here and there
to a new restaurant every night,
every night,
joining just about anyone for dinner.
But it's not that,
don't you see?
It's about love, love,
love you can't find from people
so you reach for food
to feed a hunger
that comes from an empty soul.

SCAR


My wrist has a scar
where I cut myself
once before.

I meant to die,
but the blood stopped flowing
after a while.

There is only a scar now
where the cut was deep,
and perhaps it is true
that all wounds heal.

Or do they?
I pick at the scar
again and again
again and again

and it hurts,
though it will no longer bleed.

WHO I AM

Do you see me at all?
Do you know who I am?
Do you see the real me?
Do you hear me call?

I am Pain
I am Beauty
I am Madness
I am Peace
I am Silence
I am Rage
I am Grief

I am woman.

OCEANS

There are oceans
in those eyes of yours,
oceans wide and deep,
holding untold grief,
pale jewels that glimmer
in the afternoon sun's fading light,
glimmers that hint of fire and steel.

IMITATION

I suppose we fake our lives
to cheat Death,
and honestly, who knows any better
that it's not really you in that bed
but something else—
something that has your face,
and sometimes, if you forget,
your dreams, too?

But that's not you,
only a shell,

and meanwhile,
the real you crumbles to dust
under the bed.

TONIGHT

Tonight,
these are the hardest lines to write;

To write that I remember him
and the way his eyes smiled.

To write that they smile for me no longer
and now they smile for another,
another whose hair is blacker than the blackest sea,
whose voice belongs to him
as mine did in the whispers of the night.

To write that there can be no tomorrow now.

To write that they have extinguished the light
and it is hard to swim in the river of my tears,
my raging river of grief,
and it is far simpler
to let the river wash me clean
and set my soul free
tonight.

NAKED

Your words leave me
naked,
all my soul's scars exposed,
my nerves turned to tender wires,
wisps of a plant's roots
that have turned brittle to the touch.


You leave me
naked,
my very bones exposed,
my desires turned to water,
drops of the river of my tears
that cannot be caught.

You leave me
cold,
cold in the wake of your words,

and though
I shiver,
I stand
naked,
willingly,
before you
that I might give myself
to the poetry of your hands.

I don't know why,
but speaking to you again
after so long
has left me
with the aftertaste of sadness
in my mouth.

EAR


My ear is a cup
that catches every word
you speak,

a bowl
that cradles your voice-

oh, that my ear were
a jar
to keep
the way your voice shatters the wind.

"father" in blue

You left us one night.
Shadows loomed large on my wall
until dawn's light melted them away.


Did you know the air hung still
after you were gone?
The scent of your cologne has faded
to a dim memory.

"Papa" is not a word
but a ghost in the house
who walks our rooms,

who tucks us in,
who leaves the toilet seat up,
who reigns in the empty chair at the table's head.

DICHOTOMY

In reality,
while I sit here calmly
at my desk,
apparently intent
on drawing
a neat diagram of solutions,

I am not here.

In reality,
while I sit here calmly
at my desk,
I am sitting
under the blue, blue sky,
sitting like a lotus
under a large tree
with my guitar,
singing so softly
that no one hears.

WHAT WAS
for Dino, who sang the song

There isn't any real way
to live,
only perhaps
as a song sung softly
at daybreak
to ward the darkness away-
a whisper in the wind,
a song sung from deep within,
a sound that travels
but a few feet from you
before it is eaten
by the great, big world.
The breath leaves your mouth,
ripe with hope,
and then is lost.

But it does not matter.

Having been born,
you are a song, a breath
from God's mouth,
and before you are gone,
you will have changed
the world
by having been.

* 4.February.2002 *

WATCHING THE MOON

Last night,
the moon was my knife,
a knife of ice,
lying on my sky-table.

Tonight,
the moon is my cradle,
a cradle of silver
sailing on the black sea.

Tomorrow,
the moon will be my bowl,
a bowl of pale gold
in the heart of shadow.

* written 21.February.2002 *

NOW

For Paulo, who taught me to look in the mirror

Yes, it must be a shock—
the face in the mirror
is your own,
but it isn't really you:
what happened
to the laughing child of yesterday?

It's simple.

You grew.

Now,
someone else looks back at you
when you look into the mirror,
and now,
you cut close to the skin
when you take up your father's razor.

But it must be so.
It must be like this.

Because it's only in pictures
that we don't grow.

* written 5.February.2002 *