BITTERSWEET 
© Ruth Daigon


these are the falling years for them
they will go deep and remember
how they flew the ecstatic moments
and returned to an indifferent earth
and what they never knew they invented
 
caressed by a wind
stirring their deepest sleep
they walk the paths of earth
step by step  stone by stone
until parachutes of light announced the dawn 

youth was once a gift they could afford to lose
but now as the moments spin retreats
every day is strung 
and restrung like broken beads
 
the storehouse of the past guards
the silken clefts of the body
the straight secret of the spine
the winged scapulae
with their recurrent hints of flight
and the blind hours before dawn to midnight's blaze
 
the heart recalls
the suddenness of trees
and flawless entrance of morning light
spring blooms and  impermanent buds
flowers so fragile and generous
willing to fade
giving way to the fruits of summer
 
ripe and bursting to bloom
the juice flowing from within
abundant
and the rich life reaching down to the roots again



AGAINST A LOUD SILENCE
© Ruth Daigon


To sing unencumbered by the dead  
to find new ways among the living
as night breaks its vow of silence
letting darkness out
 
To sing like birds 
in passionate anonymity
all swoop and soar
in morning's stunned beginnings
 
To sing in the shell of time
and wait for echoes from the deep   
the smell of salt and gulls calling    
the always mystery of fogs
 
To sing our numbered hours
and spin the inner moons of earth 
with rarity of simple things like snow 
and windows frosted white

To sing an octave above the past
against a loud silence, the extravagance of loss
when all was garden, grace and Eden
where nothing when it happened was enough
 
To sing faithful to the flesh
the heart's percussion 
the naked sprawl of days 
a song as old as innocence



IT IS ENOUGH 
© Ruth Daigon


It is enough to lean against
the fabric of your flesh.
It is enough to lie
in the domestic morning.
 
It is enough to watch light
expand through windows
rising and falling
between our bodies on this bed,
this room this continent.
 
We grow wise watching leaky faucets,
faded wallpaper, mismatched socks.
The coffee boiling on the stove
prepares us for the network news,
shopping malls, miracle cures
and tomorrow always sitting on our bed.
 
But in this rush of years,
we have not lost the pure imagined past,
the here-it-is, the pitch, the pinnacle
of time shining from within a million
summers or the music so intense it disappears.
 
We invent a lifetime out of small things,
free the air between our fingers,
diagram the stars, dream them into
daylight and admit the future
which is here, always here
like a clock that runs forever.


GIVING TIME ITS SLACK 
© Ruth Daigon


You tell me what seems permanent 
is not. 
It's just a universe of poise    
Never before  Never to be again.
 
I look at earth and call it heaven. 
You hear the small disorders of old grass
and know enough to call a clover   a clover
for it's exactly that.
 
Like lines etched in heart's of trees 
reveal the age of woods 
the patterns in your face measure time.

I know your value by subtraction
your tapestries of breath a trifle thinner
the contained stillness in the way you move
but the lotus moon still blooms
as we exchange liquid looks as dark as antique
honey.
 
Although, we lean into the edge of night 
the wood thrush still sings four clear notes 
and roots interweave underground.
 
We're learning to give time its slack
and dawn its breath.  Like presumptuous Arachne 
we spin and spin against all odds. 
 
Bursting through confines of time
our sons hurry past us 
never again so radiant as they were 
in the eternal now, and we
invincible and wise.
 
Through long and incandescent days
through space and time and chance
we're fixed on earth, linked 
each to each 
in this our brief forever.


TIGHTROPE WALKERS
© Ruth Daigon


rain walks across the roof
safe within the house's heart
we hear a breathing at the keyhole
and leave the door open
for anything may enter 
 
in a night all sweat and shoulders
liquid syllables fill the air
i taste the husk of his voice
hold the bulk of his body
as a glove holds the shape of a hand
 
the dark expands 
we're tightrope walkers
balancing on silence and in this place 
no doors   no windows
and the past does not arrive
 
here the unknown 
waits to be discovered 
and in a slow wash of hours
we inhale the smell of the real world
and recall the scent of the other
when we slid into each other's lives
and moved in concert
 
as the rain rains 
flowers open
small animals appear
the year ripens
in a pause that lasts forever
 
sunlight melts on our hands 
and wild geese lather the sky  
we hear the stroke of grass on grass 
as morning makes an entrance
with fur and feathers in its mouth