Selected poems
Forward
It seems my muse
is holding her breath
until I get the book out.
She keeps muttering about closure.
So while I spent the last year
feeling reticent about the forward,
there have been no new poems.
It is time to make a start.
While trees burst fireworks
and lessons shelter spring
the group from Bermuda is growing under my feet;
it is time to let it go.
Here is my book:
a portion of my portion,
a chip off my uncarved block,
The gospel according to me.
Here it is, America,
Read it and cheer.
A few suggestions regarding space and time
Have it curved; yes,
Curve it like a boomerang,
a bow or a frisbee descending
to be caught in the air by a friend.
Let it shimmer in space
let it shake up baby
let it twist and shout
with expectation and joy.
Let it stumble before breakfast,
let it mist at sunrise and
let it run with the purpose
of a runner in mid-afternoon.
Curve it the way
neck curves to shoulders,
like the inside of an elbow,
like a valley in spring.
And send it out like glorious orphan;
hovering in the style of infinite
with no immediate purpose in mind
in the unsubtle audacity of now.
On retreat
a horse on a hillside
shifts away from side to side
intrusion without excessive contemplation:
let that be my mode today, dear Lord.
May I wave in the wind
like these wild oats here with
neither preference nor opinion
but simplicity and ease.
Let me be a poem going nowhere,
an open ticket without stated definite destination,
a vacant bingo card, not
waiting for my number to be called.
May I be a small kite in the clear sky,
a morning without a clock,
a corner of unnamed blue flowers,
a geography of praise.
The first healing in the synagogue
I waited in the shadow of the law,
the place between text and page end,
like a wheezing breath at the end of a sentence;
others did not know if I were a message or a curse.
So that nothing was spoken of me,
I stayed like dried spit in
the crevice of an aged woman’s mouth,
loitering in a darkened corner.
The newcomer on me like a searchlight,
lasering all interstices so the light was known
under the blackest ink of the law. And suddenly
we were all blinded by the scene.
Our silence rang like a bell, striking
our infirmities like fireworks. Then I saw
my sickness was not different than the others,
and a new community of longing sent me out
to speak my incomplete message in a kind of greeting.
He met my broken sentence with new words,
huddled us all together into silence,
wet like childbirth, breathing like recreation,
our everyday Scripture torn apart like dead leaves
Now