What if to taste and see, to notice things,
to stand each is up against emptiness
for a moment or an eternity—
images collected in consciousness
like a tree alone on the horizon—
is the main reason we’re on the planet.
The food’s here of the first crow to arrive,
numbers two and three at a safe distance,
then approaching the hand-created taste
of leftover coconut macaroons.
The instant sparks in the earth’s awareness.

So much on the verge
of flame.
In a hot
wind anything
is tinder: paper, sage

feverish with bees,
your auburn
hair, my hand
that glows with a thought.
Sunset

or sleepless dawn,
nothing is sure
but what’s already burned—
water that’s ash, steel
that has flowed and cooled,

though in the core
of a star, they too
would fuse and rage,
and even volcanic
glass and char,

and the cold seas,
and even    
what we once were
might burn again—
or in the heart.

I hid my love when young till I
Couldn’t bear the buzzing of a fly;
I hid my love to my despite
Till I could not bear to look at light:
I dare not gaze upon her face
But left her memory in each place;
Where’er I saw a wild flower lie
I kissed and bade my love good-bye.

I met her in the greenest dells,
Where dewdrops pearl the wood bluebells;
The lost breeze kissed her bright blue eye,
The bee kissed and went singing by,
A sunbeam found a passage there,
A gold chain round her neck so fair;
As secret as the wild bee’s song
She lay there all the summer long.

I hid my love in field and town
Till e’en the breeze would knock me down;
The bees seemed singing ballads o’er,
The fly’s bass turned a lion’s roar;
And even silence found a tongue,
To haunt me all the summer long;
The riddle nature could not prove
Was nothing else but secret love.

The great blue
song of the earth
is sung in all
the best venues—
treetop, marsh,
desert, shore—
and on this spring
day in the wetlands
where, under
a late sun,
we stand alone
and in love
with each other
and the passing day
we watch a cormorant
whose eye is ringed
in blue diamonds,
a shimmering lure,
and we love this blue
and this dark bird
and this deepening sky
that pinks and hums
in the west, and then

the bird opens his beak
and flutters his throat
and the late
afternoon light
illuminates
the inside tissue
of his mouth
which is as blue
as his ocular jewelry,
as blue as the bluest
ocean, as blue
as the sky in all
its depth, as blue
as the back of the small
and determined beetle
who struggles to roll
his enormous dung ball
in his own breeding bid
to enchant another
small blue miracle.
 

We went
to watch the hawks

glow their side
of the enclosure

eyes wet from
looking, afterwards

in the museum
park I watched Lou

rub the lit
cigarette into her arm

sun spilling over 
her face, knowing

she was blind
to me sometimes

you can look
and look

the trees the trees the black
and gold glassed-in air, museum
of monkey figurines and butterflies
gallery of important and iridescent
rocks the Jurassic spider the mastodon
marginalized birds of New York City,
taxidermied dove, sparrow & starling

not lifting
a hand to stop her

eyelashes winging
open as she looked

at the scar the eye
of the hawk turning

A few surprising turns follow us everywhere.
I was shopping for something to replace
what I once felt. Weren’t there buildings there
where we once lived, fully furnished
and looking out on the sea? Didn’t we distill
from neighbors the necessary codes
and gestures? At the core we were all traipse
and meander, governed by fill in the blank.
But it was here, the ramshackle Cape Cod
with rattling shutters eaten away
then revived, mended and painted over.
It takes just a scent of sea spray
to bring back the once was: skimpy,
the bikini, the beach, the conversation,
the veil of summer, skimpy the engine
that chugs toward love, skimpy the cover
of the universe. Thanks to this fragrance
we can sit under our favorite cedar,
or picture the old dreaded barber shop.
Now I want my hair touched, and my cheek.
I want the salt rubbed out with a handkerchief.

Art thou pale for weariness
Of climbing Heaven, and gazing on the earth,
   Wandering companionless
Among the stars that have a different birth,—
And ever changing, like a joyless eye
That finds no object worth its constancy?

The dreams of the dreamer
   Are life-drops that pass
The break in the heart
   To the soul’s hour-glass.

The songs of the singer
   Are tones that repeat
The cry of the heart
   ‘Till it ceases to beat.

The afternotes: orange, a little frangipani,

and then something harsh and mineral:

an old jug rutted out of the ruins of a lost chapel.

But first it was like drinking spring water

lathed by rocks fatty with quartz. 

No, it’s inexplicable,

even the way that drink spared our feelings.

That drink liked loneliness and appreciation, lingering appreciation.

Just thinking about that drink creates a kind of yearning

that douses you like sea spray.

I drank that drink and was convinced my body

was flying of its own accord, and why not? 

The myth of Icarus is an ugly story

retold and retold and retold

by someone resentful who wasn’t able to drink

the best of the drinks we ever drank.

There was a clear sky in that glass and shaggy pines

and a bit of snowmelt doused in a fire,

and soon a blue shawl drew itself from the rim

and brimmed over us both, and something caught

inside our throats and was released—some old grief.

A grief that, possibly, didn’t even come from us. Or even from our ancestors. 
 

Fishermen out before dawn. None returned.
              I asked you why they left their nets behind,

but you were looking out, across to Assos,
              and maybe didn’t hear me in the wind.

We both wore the same ironic mask:
              one blue eye floating upon a white sea.

On that balcony, beside the iron table,
              a geranium held on for dear life.

All day we watched waves capsize in the rain.
              Our shoreline here: the other shoreline’s mirror.

Those aren’t nets, you said after a long time,
              but mounds of sodden jackets and lost oars.

Stray cats sheltered in the light of the café.
              We didn’t know the others huddled there.

The wind changed course and tried to explain
              by shaking the geranium, but words sank

in the crossing, so we heard under water.
              When I opened my hands, my palms burned,

as if they’d been lashed by splintered wood.
              In sleep, you told me, we have been rowing.

Truth is, no one here knows where we’re going.
              I begged you not to leave, but you’d already

slung a orange scarf over your wet head.
              There aren’t enough boats to carry them,

I shouted, so there’s nothing left to do.
              There is, you said. I’m going down to see.