The Old Mule

Snow

We slept like bears. And I
am from the swamp, un-timbered
lands of tupelo and high branch
cypress. So the light of the city
was a dull burn, a wade of stone
walks with the treble of boots
on heart pine. And thighs the white
of human, dress against the spine –
what web of cover. We gathered
at a wood counter over tall filled
glasses; ice and coats. This is the middle
of the longest winter in writing. And we
swayed back with the song of an imagined
tide, one that lifted and held, and illuminated
avenues of skin, your sides and fingers
reaching. In all of this we sink, sink again
in the touch, when the long matters
of life drift away, and we are left
with the warmth of hands, the grip
of resting close, the moving forward
of night, and the terrible closure of morning.

The Mountains

What a view from these hills
the yellow of fall and sunlight –
with the quick fist of stomach
when the slow swing of earth
outruns the body. What reprise
and youth feeling, here aloft with
love in the hips. I walked through
the hanging forests on moss paths,
bent to a stream in denim and boots;
pools and your bathing suit loose.
The fire of skin and hands. My
socks hung wet on the rail
as we slip between the rise and fall
of a moment more of light, warm water,
body hung perfect in arms, hair down
neck a war of scents and fabric.
Tight air relaxes and the quick
spirit of health shudders with the
flight of small birds, their sudden fall,
gliding in furious haste to the ground.
Our release is born in wild flight,
near the pitch pine, and rock.

Winter Sunday

It is winter, Sunday
and I still feel your heat drifting,
leaving me in too much air,
too much room. Lines on paper
amount to little sketches
of what we have done. Is it
through so soon? Tell me
of our next turn, what will
spread out before us now.
I sat in the shade of a palm
and waited on you for lunch.
Across the square rose ladders
against a church, old panes
removed, carpenters peeling
paint near the bell. The three
ladies placed bowls of soup
and cool water. Time began
again across the table, and
through the back window, in
a haste of spinning seasons
we find those days have gone.

Battered Old Willow

This poem is perfect. Every word is expertly placed, every utterance a gem:

    

Stanley Kunitz

-

"Touch Me"

Summer is late, my heart.
Words plucked out of the air
some forty years ago
when I was wild with love
and torn almost in two
scatter like leaves this night
of whistling wind and rain.
It is my heart that's late,
it is my song that's flown.
Outdoors all afternoon
under a gunmetal sky
staking my garden down,
I kneeled to the crickets trilling
underfoot as if about
to burst from their crusty shells;
and like a child again
marveled to hear so clear
and brave a music pour
from such a small machine.
What makes the engine go?
Desire, desire, desire.
The longing for the dance
stirs in the buried life.
One season only,
    and it's done.
So let the battered old willow
thrash against the windowpanes
and the house timbers creak.
Darling, do you remember
the man you married?  Touch me,
remind me who I am.

A Winter Storm

Cold rain coming. I am set for the night with a good book (re-reading Infinite Jest, fishing through Gary Snyder's nature poems and about to start that new book by Vendela Vida, Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name). And I am hanging my head over the edge of the boat, already peering out for Spring. At any rate, time moves of its own accord. I wonder what time felt like to Steve Wynn when he gesticulated an elbow through his Picasso?

I wrote this funny poem today while getting my oil changed. Some days I wander around ruminating on the power of the desert, with its quick blooms and shadeless nights:

Leaving / Returning

The way your hair falls on the pillow,
and little things, make me weep.
Hard pressed desert – I see sketches
of barns and rising quivering smoke,
a thirst so deep, a vision skewed
by travel. I recall your feet, how
strange to think of now, and
the sink of your chest at nap –
can you tell me again of your home
on the hills. I need a story of branches.

Resolutions

I’ve gone to join the wild boys.
-    William S. Burroughs

This is the last shot,
we are too far out now.
The curving road,
the line of old faces.
In memory, all the pieces
of trees and parks –
the mailman, a time to rest,
all of these are gone.

And Tompkins Square
is full of ghosts, and the
lunatics were our classmates
hunkered over a dull pencil
working through these endless
gaps. What strange path
we manage down
to find ourselves drinking tea
in new year weather, out in the city
with a backpack of books
and ideas to start again.

Spread Out

Tents spread out
across an arctic plain
and inside sleep bodies
where pass a million
different human dreams.
This much I know: love
left behind is a constant
toil, and the thought
of that skin is a burn
so deep, immeasurable
snow drift, the danger
of living so far out.

Well below the trade
winds they station
with equipment and metal
box radios. This is the data
of the last place on earth.
The sweep of a parka’s
hard fabric, cold by the ear,
a hush, a hush. And wind
down the neck, some
pleading message– swallow
them, relieve this furnace
of work, give back the night.

Ok, here is just a perfect few sentences from Frank Bruni (NYT; 1/10/07; In an Empire, The Power Shifts),  food critic from the New York Times:

I gave Eleven Madison two stars in February 2005, and while I normally wouldn’t review a restaurant again so soon, Mr. Humm’s food — not the new table settings, not the tweaked lighting — made me do it. I can’t have beef tenderloin in a bordelaise sauce this dense with marrow — this druggy — and stay mum. I can’t cut into such impeccably roasted duck — glazed smartly, but not too sweetly, with lavender and honey — and shut up about it. That would be a dereliction of duty. It would be just plain mean.

Have You Seen

Have you seen country shacks
that loom among oaks
and sway, loose timbered, in
the quietest breeze. These
places were real homes
and the stories that were told
up in those attics, and
clothes worn out, shoes and shoes,
where are those people now.
I imagine the groups that
shifted their families west
set up on the great pacific ridge
to feel a colder wind make up from
the shore. A spray from a rock crashed
wave would give a man certainty
that he was rightly living. And this
is what we all need most: a
reminder. A way to know that
the blood still pulses, the heart kicks.
Others, then, might still be working
some hard tract on the plains. And
their daughters are lonesome, and
the sons are hatching escape. But
here, too, there is a particular
expanse every evening, so drawn out
that even the teenagers notice
and stand back from their cars
and walk out on the lane. Above
them is the fire of a new year,
the old begins to cease, a new
stretch laid bare, some great
and unknown spit of land pulled
from the core of all we know
a whole and new place, a moment,
that is to say, of knowing the importance
of shelter in life, the evenings spent
talking are writ, we come from one
another, we tell our own stories,
and in return we are told.

Heights

To be lost. On and on.
I feel the weight of
all these feet. The
train pushes dust
through the tunnel. On
and on.

Clipped speech. The
settling of bags.
I am anxious before the
maps, streaked with
directions. I feel lost.
I turn to humans
but sense the
cold of earth.

The slipping, point
by point, to get there.
We press by each
other, long to glance

but make do
with our destination,
the folded paper,
anything, anything
to divert our eyes.