object lesson -

in the garden there are aspens now turning yellow.
and roses, now slowing, still blooming white.
in the closets there are sweaters the colors of wet stones;
stacks of scarves so elaborate each deserves its orange box,
disregarding, perhaps,
being bound up alone.

the baccarat is ruby,
a gift given gradually,
a collection of crystal from a fragile man.
there are plates shaded like sand dunes
and flatware like seashells
and floors like a child’s blood
drawn in preschool.

there is velvet on the sofa like the sky before dusk
and leather cracked and golden like the sky after dawn.
the lamps are black lacquer
and the walls are hot chocolate
or coffee or licorice or bittersweet
to taste.

the linens on the bed will flicker like candlelight
violet and cream,
sepia and white.
the walls of the bedroom will glow in that candlelight:
strawlike and stemlike
crisp and silk striped.

and they all flicker madly
to catch your attention,
they compete and repeat their chorus to the night.

but I have your hand and your mouth and your eyesight,
and I fill your head
and I color your life.





GLS
10.30.02

the summer after, noon -

In a corner somewhere near
lies my history.

I have put it down momentarily,
not really watching the time,
in order to plant some rosebushes,
in order to bind a trellis to a fence.

I wish to watch,
for awhile.
to see the buds form burst brown fall.
to see the twine darken rust flake fall.
to feel the world stretch moan turn and rise.

I raced to get here,
I pushed hard and felt little.

which is why the story of me
will remain dormant for now.

it is time for the story of everything else,
and this time,
I only wish to hear.

the words will come again.
I have always known this about words.
they fail you when you need them.
they run over you when you are tired.

iceberg roses on a fence in a yard.
sun through the trees in the afternoon heat.
a car passing over the manhole down the block, and coming closer.

I will not take this turn.  I will pass.






GLS
07.11.02

the taste of love –

the place where there are no gifts,
the moment where there are no words,
the location of loss
and the parallel of joy,
here is where love at last rests.

I have watched a decade,
both empty of you and full,
skip before me like ribbon down a stairwell,
and I know that I have learned nothing
and learned it a million times.

I know that there is no way to pinpoint
and that definition is something best left for scholars
far brighter than I.
I know that I am quicksilver and that you are stone;
that you are the wind and I am stone;
that the world changes with an utterance,
and in a day is made unwhole.

how interwoven are we,
like fingers into fists?
or are we drawn along a skein more silken,
expected to form a mantilla for shelter, a coverlet for night?

I hear sentences in the air,
and I close my eyes and reach for the ground,  to find you, where you are not listening.
and I am thankful for your earth rich constancy,
for your orbital pull upon my corpse,
and your visceral pull on my soul.

I do not deserve, but I demand.  and you will provide,
unable to resist the potion or the poison,
mead of my lips and my mind,
biting and dark, saplike and viscous, tender as night,
spilled upon a page or a sheet or a parchment or sand.
it matters not which age.

you will be there.

at this point so relative, where hands are taken off
the clock,
I shake, I breathe, I release, I void,
for we are going to be here awhile.



LS
02.14.02

why blue is your color –

when I first saw you, it was not as intimate as later,
when you watched my back
and forgave me.

when I first touched you, and then your skin,
it was not as powerful as when I was apart from you
and could not sleep,
could not dream,
could not settle for days with you missing.

when I knew your love, it was not through your words,
but through your eyes,
and the way they held me,
across a room,
and the woman, like Elizabeth, she droned on,
unaware
that I was
aloft.

the smell of you dissipates through the day,
until only the slight touch of the
Japanese fragrance
remains on your tendons,
and then it is mine,
because only I am allowed
to be
this close.

and I am weaker than when we started, and less sure.

and you are stronger, I think.

and once,
you held my hand in public,
and told me that you loved me,
and I closed my eyes.

because I knew that I would not survive
the color of your eyes
if I did not.


GLS
10.30.02