Homage to Wallace Stevens



1. my thoughts are heavy,
    a wet blanket of gray
    like the darkening sky

2. falling leaves dangle
    leopard light mid-air
    over fields of purple mist

3. a wind-child plays
    with shadows faltering
    through black-armed trees

4. silence of shapeless black
    stretches between pin-***** stars
    and a glacial crescent moon

5. clock turned back an hour
    I feel split, confused by
    precocious night and
    early air-blue light

6. shop windows writhe
    with glittery excitement
    while I feel only
    the phantom fingers
    of too many years

7. season of between
    invisible beneath
    your gaudy disguise,
    you softly dialogue
    with death.

Silence spirited with teal
and an hour when nothing need happen,
Time gone beyond unanswering light,
hurling unheard echoes, slipping away
on the wind.

Notice the decomposing day,
the baffled bee meandering
among the season’s blossoms.

Follow the moon’s blood-red beams
and the goddess gone to fire.
She’s left cryptic messages
on the clouds for those who
care to read.

It’s useless to expect a bath or
of rainbows, a rush of angel wings.
Instead, treasure each small drought
of tenderness, pronouns love’s name
softly, and be forgiveness of the butterfly.

I learned the language of words
but also that of signs –
which lies are welcome,
which truths unspeakable,
which sentences explode,
which soothe like a cool breeze.

I whispered to hide my foreign vowels.
I learned to be seen and not heard –
to soothe my joints, white with anger,
and the yellow bruises of shame.

I practiced insincerity
and swift apology,
hoping new linguistics
might arise from generations
of politeness mispronounced.

But the years spilled into
a new millennium and
I learned – however much
you love a language,
it may not love you back.

Being grows in earth
and the water of the womb
where heaven pools
its special nourishment.

Body, once born,
is a lone, flying crane
resisting with an energy
of singular intention.

But mind must live
in the world’s garden
among a few bright blooms
of insight, many thorns
of righteousness,
gnarled roots of rage.

The body’s path is straight,
narrow, its promise certain.
But mind must choose
at each which path to take.

Sometimes, the jade air
Sometimes, the forest’s verdant breath
Sometimes, the moss pond
and the frog’s plonked exclamation.
Sometimes, the confused helix
of crossed branches, the sun’s
enduring eye, blinded here and there
by the cliff’s stern countenance.

Each of these can manifest
as the soul’s reflection,
For how else could it know
its own existence?

Only chance can help
the soul to find its way
through heaven’s web of lumens
and planets’ eternal orbits,
an endless procession
of hollow moments to be filled
by a sudden eclipse of expectation,
a quick downpour of regret,
a shadow of fear, a memory exhumed.

Yet the final rush
of enlightened immersion
is only a license to begin again.

The world is made of mystery
as wild as the dunes
where secret spirits gather
and grasses whisper psalms.
My guesses cannot run as fast
nor can ideas fly
to catch all that amazement
floating upwards toward the sky.

This universe enormous,
its distances unknown.
Its stars and moons and planets
live in their spacious home,
but all that can belong to us
is life and death alone.

Glittering brilliance, these crystal panels
dressed in their thick, gold frames,
cupping and shaping the light,
pooling images the second they appear,
then, unlike the camera, they let go,
swallowing the world whole,
preparing for the next procession
of time-bond creatures.
They respect transience,
creating their own temporary ripples,
their own instantaneous installations.
They are mime artists of illusion,
disappearing as the earth darkens.
Patiently, for they wait for the return
of light, never doubting it will come.