My muse sleeps in the ****
She rollicks til dawn
And moans at the moon
She told me once she had
A sawtooth fling with a
        luckless Spaniard
                in Madrid
                in spring
Ragged and religious love
And she danced with him
Wearing flouncy whim
Her petticoat showed

        And the red cape flowed
                the red cape flowed

She walked out on me
When my well ran dry
When I couldn't fly
I pictured her
        ***** in hand
Listening to some
        lost-boy band
Woozy from the trancing beat
Purring in a poet's ear

        Oh the promises my dear
              the promises my dear

She dropped in late one night
Dressed in drama
        stained with rhyme
As I was taming a cranky line
And she winked at me
        like things were fine
As if she hadn't been gone
        but an eye's blink
I opened the door and
Poured her a drink --

        I called her home
        I called her.       home.

Last night a heist:
My dreams made off
        with a rare shade of blue
Not quite like the clearest sea
Or the West's Big Sky stretching eternal --

But like the robin's blue speckled eggs
Coddled in a careful nest
(But where is mother?)

The shells, pulsing, warm,
So delicate a breath could burst
        them
And the little lives within;

I dreamt it, and in the dream,
I wept, like a child who knows
        Suddenly
That hope and abandonment
Are both blue --

This empty page mocks me
        Taunts me
To put something down --

A flash of brilliance or a conspiracy
A moment in my life that wrestled me
A quick turn of phrase that collars wit
A clever bon mot that jockeys to fit

A little irreverence, words wearing stubble
An entendre that isn't inclined to be double
A plucking or two from Bartlett's garden
A letter that I'll not feel right to send

A first edition or a final memoir
A record for posterity of what I saw
A joint venture or a solo flight
A pristine line with gentle bite

A sonnet brandished in the name of love
A psalm to All Glory that comes from above
A piece of history that needs to be told
A stanza that mustn't ever be sold --

She is mathematics,
bare necessity in numbers

Curvature and roundness,
symmetrical circumference
lies in the rise of her hips

A tanned half moon,
a breast

A pose

The fall equinox begins
in the shadow
of the small of her back

Night looms beyond, below
connecting beauty's dots

Her body reclines,
hand resting between waist
and hip, an impasse

Head at rest
held by soft hand.

Death is part of life
        They tell us
Yet still we grieve
Still we are bereft
It is our most human trait
It is our noblest gift --

This mourning love for another,
Going past the gates of breath
        and consciousness
Beyond touch and sight
To a place in that distant
        comforting light
Where we all will gather
Someday;

It brings us peace,
And we go on
        by remembering joy --