The hundred seeds of night-

The Finger Lakes wind through me
like the gorges at Cornell,
they pierce, they echo, they resonate,
though far.
I will not return to Cayuga,
or view it from “high above”,
but the vineyards at the lakeside
are my living metaphor.

Whey they are cut back, savagely,
to bloom again later,
you can trace the arch and twine of their limbs,
and feel the flooding in their roots.
What once was a lover’s fragrant curling,
tendrils burdened by blossom and grape,
becomes a flashing after-image,
the amputee of vision and promise.

These nights alone are like that,
imprints of the movement and the flesh
linger in the air,
flash the eye inside.
the sheets, like soil, absorbed the parts we spilled,
soaking and staining themselves paler,
as if with snow
fallen from twisted stalks.
The sheets are cold and broad,
like those fields of vine.

Even if they had voices,
the sheets or the fields,
they would whisper now,
so as not to disturb me as I remember,
as my fingers press down
as I implant.





GLS
4.8.92