To fling my arms wide
In some place of the sun,
To whirl and to dance
Till the white day is done.
Then rest at cool evening
Beneath a tall tree
While night comes on gently,
    Dark like me-
That is my dream!

To fling my arms wide
In the face of the sun,
Dance! Whirl! Whirl!
Till the quick day is done.
Rest at pale evening...
A tall, slim tree...
Night coming tenderly
    Black like me.

You were supposed to give of yourself--
Your angel dust was dragon fire;
*The spark to her funeral pyre.

it is not the stars
but the spaces
between the stars
that matters,
the unaltered blackness
that draws in breath
on a frozen winter night
the accepting anxiety
of what remains unseen
between the orbs
of failing or dead light
their extinguished gases
someday arranging the night
into another vista
of unknowable darkness.

In the emptiness of my
father's birthday the
year after he died

I'm picking up my girlfriend
at the airport, and July
is a singing bed of trees.

A giant shadow roams
through my mind. Birds
slash in a surging field.

How is he gone?
I feel things slide
away from me,

memorials in the air,
when I confront
the gear of absence.

I drink from his favorite
coffee cup - "Key West,
A New Slant on Life."

I invoke him in so
many ways but the
shadow still moves.

The sixth of July
arrives and departs
in nails of heat,

& new faces draw
the sting away
from missing ones.

Myrtle grows wild,
white moon bells,
blood blossoms -

I trap these things
inside his old
Nikomat camera

as the day arches
its back to let
the shadow by.

You can pin me down
But shattered scales will be all that is left
Wings bloodied
By a heart u n b l e e d i n g