When this mortal frame does falter,
If there be left a body still to burn
Cast my ash from the cliffs of Dover
For on the winds I shall return.
Though my soul may be lost to water,
Bones bleached and turned to dust
My heart will soar across the forests
Climbing mountains in the dusk.
Then as the daylight rises
And darkness gives way to light
I will cast these eyes, one last time,
Across the shores of life.

revision April 27 2001

Recrudescence

(Recrudesce: to break out
again after lying latent or relatively inactive)

My friend,

There are doors which even you and I
have never opened. Shut for so many
years I am slammed back against
the sink of meditation.

Drawers unopened, their loneliness
stuck shut, slipped behind hinges.
Whole cabinets of dust. I wore many
selves. Stains hang here so far
removed from conversation
as to be little calciums. Calculi.
I rattle with little bones.

But since you ask….


Viz.:

When the gun was pressed against
my head I sat more still than a
fig on a summer tree, more breathless
than a whisper, more quiet than the
center of that fruit, It’s stem
my hair, I felt it's roots
take. I was sixteen.

I always wondered if the red dye
of my fear rubbed off on him.
He was silent, his face the only light
in the room, the phosphorescence of
madness. He couldn't find
me I guess, inside my aubergine
stillness.

He was a steel shaft in
his hand. At last he slipped
to the door.

In the end, unbreathing,
I saved him.

Ego te absolvo.

I was so afraid he wouldn't
like me anymore.

In the palm of my hand
Perfection
The stone I stole
From your beach
Forgiving me
For taking it away
From the sand
That cradled it, the sun
That warmed it
The waves that washed
Over it
For thousands of years,
The sublime smoothness
Of its soul,
Not striving to be
A moon or stars
It just IS
Already part of
The grand order
Complete in the universe
In the oneness I yearn for.