Freak Show
With what unfull
and hurt, cupped hands
I push
through such
demented air- all places where you' aren't, fumbling
toward the weight and wall of your absence. Whatever held me
skeined and smooth, pulled
round the bobbin of what makes sense,
broke free. I see me spilled into the
circus freaks of every day, too tired
to fight my way
through Fellini Land alone: I miss your
buttered, rolling laugh.
These golden calves
who take themselves
so seriously, you would have given
gaff to, you- the one who saw insanity and said it.
Together,
we knew tripe
from true: you were the main
spar
of the big tent, holding the roof up-
calling out acts
so I knew what was real
and what was show- it blends now: every
tumbler, every geek and fire eater-
every
aerialist
and lion act makes me
miss you, and what is worse is
I am
one
with it. Without your
sharpened, blueeyed
fire, without
your glorious fury, I am second ring and
center- without a
guidon.
The Pain of Noticing
There are a lot of poems about
Isis: gods and nymphs and creatures
who touch our dreams
but where, I ask, are the screech owls
who fly across an ordinary day
to startle us away from death
for a moment? Whose only purpose
is the high pitched sound of life
there among the roses,
kneeling on bleeding knees
awake in wet grass welcome
for its thorns.
Climateric
One by one,
the shutters close
as though by unseen hands. There is
no wind. Wind is over. Gale
winds, great wind
tearing off the branches
twig by twig; there'll be no blossoming.
Not this season,
season of wind and droughty corners,
where once
was heaped a happiness of blankets lumped
too casual to keep there now. No expectant knees
up under the chin, no chest in which there beats
a wild and Cherokee heart, giddy
from the special words
for words are cheap.
The saddest that I'll ever keep,
are those not mine but once believed-
and so the time flows
inexorably,
through summer fall winter
spring- and on
to
always.
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