Your umbrella and muddy galoshes

Elvish child of Spring, dancing in the rain.

Lovely as the innocence of being chaste.

Laughter banishing all fears so dark.

On faith, on stars - the color of remembrance…

Wondering if it’s raining where you are?

Who were you?
A foreigner
a mere woman?

Perhaps I valued you
beyond the common measure

I think of the possibility
of lives we have lived
in some past time
some other world

I guess I am a Buddhist
after all.

Because
this fascination
this love
goes beyond my experience

What can I compare it to?

I believe in the potency of desire
that it can manifest itself
across a span of years

a span of lifetimes

I can imagine
that we were
then as now
different in appearance
from cultures widely separated

Let's say that I wanted you
that you wanted me
for so it is today

Let's say that circumstances
kept us apart
or prevented us from meeting
as equals

Let us say, finally,
that this world
in which anything seems to be permitted
was created for us
that we might meet again.

What an absurd
romantic notion!

Tonight the lights are all on.
Other beings surround me.
This world is a different world
for each one of them,
though strangely the same.

Surely this world is ours.
The lights
are brightly lit.

Thousands of insects
cover the glass
dazzled by this light.

We must be dazzled, as well.
For none of us can see.

Not a one of us
can touch the heart
of another.

So since all is permitted
let us permit ourselves this

that we can touch one another
each into each.

Under the weight
of loneliness
I wear the universe
like a cloak,
pressed around me,  pinned
holding me close in
its wild womb
gathering up the shards
of warm fire laughter
and voices
that weave into bones
rising in chants
pinnacles gently rocking
into a frenzy
of dark lunar dance

and my
inner moon rises
it's spackled lights
like penetrating eyes
wrapping me in its
blanket of
             stars

I hadn't meant to spy on them; just one of my evening walks along the beach.  Moonlight gleaming on wet teenage backs.  Horseplay crackling in their young male voices-- “King of the Hill” from a rusty life guard chair.  I like these memories, the ones that just occur-- when everything is there again....

Coming to find myself again in October.  Long trudge to the “Shanty Village” gets me thinking about the wrinkled hand that first took me close to the ageless roar and seething.  Skirted bathing suit, indelible tremble of voice-- the woman bringing me beyond the fear that had watched all day from those cautious castles, after being so rudely trounced!   She helped me make my peace with what I could neither own nor tame— the sea and me.  We walked along the channel then, watching slender fishes in their school-- that even fish would go to school!  We had to laugh.  Scorching the soles of my feet in the parking lot!  Oo-ah-oo-ah! Forgot my flip-flops!
_

October now, piling sand along the roadside....  First kiss at Cooks Brook Beach.  Surf breaking over this jetty, could have been my heart.  I think his name was Stan....

How can people leave their flowers still blooming in window boxes?  In the cottage quiet, I can almost picture... bicycles leaning by dripping shower stalls.  Beach umbrellas, the smell of suntan lotion,  kids roving in barefoot bands....  Fall packs them all away.

While cold advances on the struggling song of crickets, a man, wearing a painter's hat and whistling, does the unthinkable-- hammers plywood over his shanty's windows.  I think that summer people can close their eyes.  We, of October, have vivid memories-- savoring sources that linger in their endings.  Coming late—staying long beyond the leaving-- sleeping warm in winter sands.

Fever too high
Doze
hallucinate
doze...

...into the blue sky
and watch the tracer upward
tip
hesitate
and turn toward earth
Split apart
in the widening billows of a scream
One that took the whole world down with it

“You-- who have mounted to the sky
will be cast down
with great violence
You, the golden cup”
set down

I am burning up at 103
Toss in the arid sheets
Chafed flushed cheeks and lips
against this living pillow
Desert
Hallucinate
Can't get a GPS on where I am
or a decent read on what's the time
But most of all – what just happened?

I toss and wake to slivered light
coming from another room
Hear the whispers
See their vacant faces
Must have walked into the den
Feel their shivers hush
my questions

Between the aisles of candlelight
and murmured prayers
I'm walking
Still in my right mind

“It's on the screen”
for all to see
without electricity

I have a fever of 103
--and the main question

Why everyone's transfixed
Everyone

but me
__


1-28-86

9-11-01