Let there be a settlement of snow
long green veils of rain
and radiant squalors

Let there be moon-plucked waves
and thick-tongued leaves
that whisper sleep's dark flower

Let the pulse beat within us
rich as salt, hot as sun,
giving time its edge

Let us steep tansy, coriander
and cloves in wine
drinking deep its magic cures

Let us bring the knower to the known
for there are no second comings
and what waits is just a breath away.

Air glows, sweat jewels his chest
and the future hangs suspended,
the past invisible
as we burrow into love.

Here, I am no one's child
and no one's mother
following the silken thread
through the stillness of the maze.

After hours of talk and touch,
the moments in-between laced with silence,
like Heloise removing her pale garments,

I lie in the smooth mouth of sleep
until sunlight's chipping at the blinds
and the morning paper tossed against the door.

In the measuring of breath,
in the words between us and the looks,
balanced, cantilevered, interlocked,
they plot distances and chart the depths.

Out of sun and fog,
out of clover, mint and pennyroyal,
out of fragrances of fresh-cut grass

we have come this far.

I want to shut out the yammer and slam around us:
gossip stretching its three necks,
tongues humming like locusts
during the first Pharonic plague.

I want to shape a space for calm
and stand kneedeep in Mendelsohn and Mozart
singing stained glass cantatas
under halos of the moon.

I want to step out of windows
and drown in fire bursts of flowers
or strip the fuzz from the peach
and tongue the blush on the flesh below.

I want the feeling
that we're quite ourselves again
resilient as earth
and moving like snails in slow motion lust
deep in the expectations of love.

Through the long night of the body,
she weaves a tapestry,
finger tips remembering each stitch,
each stroke a small pulling together

of her entrance into the world, poised
like a bird, shaped
into a moment of wings
in a perfect attention of flight,

of branching roads beneath her
corridors of wind, tattoos of light,
a sliver of stream finding its path

through rock and earth and clay,
through a universe of seeds
moting the calm summer air
and wonder leaping in recognition.

In a hush of color, she returns
unencumbered.
turning like a blade
edgewise to the moon's light, she
slips through it for one hour,
the next,
then all the others.

thin skeins of dawn reveal
a white room, a mirror,
round like the mouth of a child.

Outside the morning window,
summer's yellow pollen
whirls below a white-washed sky.

In the scald of afternoon, we learn
the dead man's float and one of us
tries flight. The first whiff

of autumn is the smell of cut wood
under a rough palm, fruit ripening
into scent, and everything is

musk, silk, wordless smiles.
As air turns to spice, we savor
apricot desire until light grows

old and the weather vane grinds
slowly on its swivel. It's the dead
season where emptiness grows

feet and there's only
one demon in the attic
one death in the town --- and ah

we still mourns Pavlova,
her touch of calculus and honey,
a breathless moment in our lives.

Her death so light,
we held it in the palm
of our hands.