November
after Stanley Kunitz
starts on your mind.
Ages breathed into the sea
just this afternoon,
reposed and reeling, you are
made whole again by what lingers:
processions of snowfall
– just this afternoon –
sleepy, padded, hilling still.
It isn’t your mind shaking
off the heavy white heaps.
Tucked away at midnight
below a rigorless sky
but for grey-veined clouds,
the silently heaving geese –
calls loose from shifting clusters.
Thrown into late life, you ask:
What staggers the seasons?
Rain is its own ablution.
Reproach the sea-flung trees –
bare oaks gnashing the sky
outside the citied coasts,
drowning me in the syllables of
my own repeating.
Seasons of Alizarin
For Lauren
I. Fall
Your body is a keyhole in the night sky. Gold-thinned November dusk,
refulgent dogwood, red blushing yellow,
it drinks: slow-savoring, deep-slouching autumn – citrine leaves,
red-rust, smeared with charcoal.
II. Winter
Who can read the stand of wisteria? Not me, brother – black winter coat-tails
the light-loud bird squall – fermata, staccato.
The solstice ache and groan wells up in the underbrush, Piedmont’s taut skin
flushes while the night administers the fleck-shine.
III. Spring
Walking the back road bight – whip white striped– the flaming pagoda
crashes slowly atop the cold-cough Blue Ridge;
we unclench our breaths at Humpback Rock, our footfalls trellis through
the sputum fog, scratching the belly of April’s ambrosia.
IV. Summer
Eyes flashing with delight, we have bathed the feet of ich-schmerz August.
Her hot tawny locks fall around us and fill our mouths.
Watch how we stumble into bliss like calves robed in caul – watch us
drunken skylark off. Watch as our ashen lips catch fire.
Champagne
The girl with hair made of candles
sees her reflection in the asterisms
of fire-fruit, unplucked & gently
hung in winter’s black branches.
The girl with the mouthful of sky,
& the quiet peal of tongue & tooth,
cutting breath-ribbons into a flowering of sound
no one will hear, playing in the air around
her lips. Rose-rubbed Charlottesville,
wing-stung, spring cloth sky, sucked up
& ground out. She holds out her glass
& the sky melts into clear golden water.
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