Jasmine High (A Dream Poem)

In what town have I slipped off to the smell
of costal water? What dock with flaking paint
and lamps of taffy blue have I padded down,
in fishy air, pressing a red-head’s hand?

A long haired teenage troubadour was twanging
from the wilted bar a half mile down
the shore. This late, just one old bluejeaned angler
was squinting downward on the fragile waves.

And as they overturned, a ceaseless blinking
partly stolen from the glowing town,
and part their own sad folding, white on gray,
they made me sad, and love her all the more.

A love that troubled and comforted me
as wind that wandered down the little alleys,
that liked but didn’t stir the hung-up herbs,
that liked but didn’t understand the cloud

ragging all hard all night against the moon.
The clatters of dishes from the yellow houses
were sounds of home that just put home farther
away. The jasmine swelled against my brain.

When I became a wind that chased your hair,
and spent all night collecting sand to splash
against a dune, I lost you in the rhythm
of those transpiring, unconnected things.

My red head, dove, my green eyed hummingbird
above the dock, my pair of scraped bare feet,
sundress, old swan, what town is this, with salt
still in my shoes, I’ve dreamed? Have I dreamed you?

1.10

Three Things a Blackbird Doesn’t See

What does the girl with the umbrella
say about the rain? That it has
made her world the underside
of a blackbird’s wing.

What does the rain say of the umbrella’s
drumming? That it entices the waters towards
her shielded figure, making her walk
on the leaf-plashed brick a harmony of desires.

The crow knows nothing about it.
A little of his nature stolen by
her imagination, he shoulders the rain
and flies back out of her eye again.

Edinburgh 1.23.10

Sunset, Late Winter

Little red bud,
first small branch-
end droplet,

my frail produce
of the winter’s pain,
you are enough, enough,

better than the whole
wet tree’s quick evening gold
at pacifying me.

1.22.10

Cherries

for Dani

Her mouth, so sunset dark
had eaten cherries. Carefully,
to leave the stems still
vining from the seed.

Bobbing down the stairs,
her look said they were naked
in a china bowl, tabled
sunning near the parted window.

The unforbidden pleasures
taken in an air of worship,
these she understood,
and so I knew that as well

as mine, she was the sun-dressed bride
of a still-young God, hanging
the trees, late afternoons,
with red delicacies.

1.22.10

What it Meant

The lunar moth
of girlhood
settling, small
violent shuddering,

and the boat’s flirtations
with the blue terrain
clear and fast as
a baby’s eye,

the sleep of this waterlogged
girl in a surrounded chair,
unaware she is about to
let her favorite book

slip tiredly into the sea.
All is going orange.
Her smooth legs and arms
are alight.

Above and behind her,
uneasy packs of sea flies
hover and dissolve
in winds carried in

on the breakers.
For such an evening,
for the fanning palms of
the young who wouldn’t give…

but just that longing
is perhaps the seaside’s meaning,
it’s the blue polish on
the churned stones,

the dank sweet scent of
seaweed’s death. Quiet.
Watch what the streetlight on
the cliff throbs downward to reveal:

her squeak and barely woken running,
her effortless flitting away
towards her bed with its white
window to the sailing moon.

1.10