It is not enough
to have known her.
(She was near the ocean).
It is not enough to hold
in the mind each pattern
on each petal
(a Summer flower).
To love is to believe
that Summer persists!
But this is not the order
of living-
She is momentary,
like all things.

This is the loudest the music goes
I have nothing left to drink
still, all around me are the wolves-
circling...
get on with it!
you devoured all
the beautiful things
already.

A body lies in the dirt,
and the vermin circle it
until the flesh submits,
and then it is no longer a man.
He no longer thinks
of the ******* the train
or his mother's sadness.
The rebellion has ended.
He is only earth now,
rotting.

Strange creatures pace
under a fading half-moon
and some people get dressed
get ready to go to work
or school or the cemetery
and on their way in the car
looking east- the terrible Sun!
If only you could delay its
entrance, if you could postpone
the turning of your world
around it...no. We all claw
desperately at something,
half-formed and fleeting,
just out of reach

It is your doing, April.
Your clarity pulls me
to the fields
where grass is wet-
my eyes fix on
pulsing of color in flowers
blooming.
It is April's doing.

I want to hitchhike down
those highways

(the long streaks of color
in your eyes)

past your thoughts and into
our garden

Free now from your books, you
walk the path behind the halls
where a bird completes her
pirouette
and descends onto a branch
shaking its flowers. Petals
are released!
and float down in
increments-
Lowering, degree by
degree in a swaying motion
against the gentle pushing-back
of spring air

They land in a pond.