She invited me into her palace of art,
Where everything signified something else.
She wore a silvery gown,
Covered with a million miniature mirrors.
I was badly dressed.

“Beautiful lady, be my love
and heal my soul.
My life is fragments.
Make me whole.”

“I made this place to stand apart,
A window to a world purer, deeply felt.
Everything here is for you but my heart.
Don’t get the idea that it’s going to melt

Later on.”  Music played.
Nirvana. Or maybe it was “Deacon Blues.”
Twisted letters carved
On doorknobs offered clues
To someone else’s mystery.

“Then be my muse,
Teach me the language of clouds
The coded words on the ceiling’s vault.”

A digital river flowed beneath
A winding stair down to an analog sea.
I asked “Are these ‘caverns measureless to man’?”
“Yes,” she said, “But not to woman.”

I wandered through room after room,
One printed, one painted, one sculpted, one
Paneled with friezes like the blazing tomb
Of an epic queen deified by the sun.

I saw a near-empty room with a single chair.
The light defined its form,
its form escaping into light.
“Is this real or a photo?”
“Yes,” she serenely replied.

I came to two doors.  One said Discipline,
One Desire. “How can I possibly choose?”
“They lead to the same place,” she said.

What was real and what wasn’t flowed together
“You’re starting to figure it out.”

The innocence of a woman’s arched back,
And the wisdom of children.  
The solitude of a lonely pier.

I knelt and I thanked her “Was all this for me?”
“I made this to give away. Not just for you.
What have you learned?  Let’s review.

“Art is a shield
Against falling glass. Art healed
My divided mind, which used to devour
Itself, giving away its power.

Art is hunger, a piercing lack.
Art is a ride on a gull’s back.

Art is a dodge, the as of the mirror.
Art destroys, callous clearer
Of old order.  Art is a dance,
a surrender to chance.

Art is not all seduction and fire
Or tethered to your desire
(Except when it is).  
Beyond the dazzle of you and me,
Art is a failing light for learning how to see.”

I said “Now I understand less than before.”
“Then you’re ready.  
Imagine starry ways beyond these walls.
Use an innocent eye.  
Confusion calls.”

I never saw her again.
But it was enough
to start small.  

She tempted me like an empty page.
From this immense vacuum, I write.

She wakes me up deep in the night.

I understand you, she smiles
snuggling into me, her nose,
pressed cotton soft on my cheek

I have no strength, I cry
not one, for you

I love your weakness
love you for your weakness
her breath wafts into mine

and the boy stuck in his age
floats in the web
of the girl forever
forgiving.

You see the slump in my shoulders
the way I carry myself
the burdens of boulders
that threaten my health.

When you ask what's wrong
I pull up my guard
don't want your pity or sad song
won't tell you why life's hard.

So if you want to know
I'll bottle it inside
wrap up all remains in a black bow
and tell you I'm fine.

On rising heat, killdeer flush
to decoy enemy--
threat to its young that roams too close
They rush to skim on hayish blur
wailing over wildflowers drying

Fretful twitter in perpetual flight
swifts-- twirl and hurl their bits of bodies--
debris
from a cumulonimbus of a late-day sky
toward a ridge of stag horn sumac
presuming horizon primordial
behind which time and city-- drift and wobble
on rising heat-- after rush hour

Rising Heat
Rising--
to meet my mind
on its way down
from my post behind
the laundromat
where I view it all--
rising--
where I usually go in search of quiet
to almost hear the ocean
     two hundred miles away
to strain words from wind
     in careless conversation
to wonder over
     missed whispers....

But not today
In rising heat, I went down
in search of something better--
     your eyes again
     solvent for my presence of mind
     dissolvers of hours and the order of things
But I need an excuse!
     To turn, to trespass, to disturb the peace!
     For your eyes again!
And still I need more-- being feverish, weak
Or?
Or... should I take the cure?
     To deny ...To deny

To deny what?
Overtones from a sea of years?
I don't know!  Whatever it was!
Nothing explain it...

I melt... I'm gone....

The birds no longer give their song
They have given up the forest
To my sorrow
It is silent
Love is gone
There's nothing left of hope
The seasons change
Love is gone

The battle between
darkness and depression
is onslaught for any troubled soul
for it takes place much deeper
than any dug out hole
This darkness seems to just find me
Takes over my world into my sanctuary
It settles around the iris of my eyes
Turning me into someone who just seems to cry
Rooted in negativity and lost in my pain
Through my eyes it enters my brain
Corrupting my each and every thought
Breeding unwelcome memories that like to haunt
Spreading now like poison through my veins
Trying to take over till nothing remains
Writing words is my only defense
When nothing else I do makes any sense
The power of prose keeps that place deep within me
Safe and free from this darkened toxicity…

Slow is her progress and high is her climb,
It's measured in arcs that trace my night sky.
I spoke and she answered, but only in rhyme,
Across space and time, the poetess and I.

In my dream we met, and she told me she'd written,
Something dear to her kind heart- a poetic creation.
For Sara herself, I was utterly smitten,
And I urged her to share it, with awkward elation.

I rambled then, foolish, and shy to be near,
Since her words had already reached me before.
In a future that’s past yet, paradoxically, here,
And knowing, not knowing, just what was in store.

“There's a poem that you wrote...”, I had started to say,
“In the Bradbury story, I think that's the one”,
“There's an automated house that's going through it's day...”,
“It recites your piece aloud...?  but the people have all gone...?”

“ ‘There will come soft rains’,dear friend”, her reply,
And her smile said, “thank you.  I'm glad you recall”,
“But this one is shorter”, and her voice was a sigh,
“It’s a different theme, but encompasses all”.

Then, as you'd expect, in the midst of a dreaming,
She opened her notebook and the next thing I knew,
Four lines of writing appeared, only seeming,
To arrange themselves magical, universal and true.

——————————————————
"Moon's  Ending"  by Sara Teasdale

Moon, worn thin to the width of a quill,
In the dawn clouds flying,
How good to go, light into light, and still
Giving light, dying.
——————————————————

Every step of our lives, we are walking the line,
Fail or succeed, illuminated in the trying,
The moon is just as bright when she's on the decline,
Our light, consolation to the living or dying.

Thank you, poets. You gave everything that you could,
When you’d make something holy from the simplest spark.
Thank you, friend, for understanding. I had hoped that you would.
Thank you, Sara, for writing the light and the dark.