Write your poem — she told me –
not about a snow storm
but rather a snow flake.
That is how she came to me,
not with blizz and bluster,
fizz and fluster, but soft
and Seleney, floaty, flirty,
melt on my shirty,
crystallined, one of a kind.
Archive for human heart
Snowflake
Old Love, New Love
Old love is like an old suit of clothes,
well-worn at the elbows and knees
from all the years of hard work and
from all the crawling. At one time,
perhaps, you could have said it was
comfortable, but now it’s just small
and sad — tight through the back
and arms, harder to move, harder
to breathe, you just have to suck in
your waist, hold your breath, and zip.
New love is like a new penny that
glints in the sun so you pick it up
for luck, shiny and bright, a perfect
circle with perfectly smooth edges,
and turn it over and over in your
pocket where no one else can see.
You have become a collector of
pretty things that catch the light,
a blackbird caching treasures.
Old suits are worn at weddings
and funerals — your funeral —
the black wool blend pressed crisp,
the creases sharp, the collar stiff
as a cadaver, everything neater
than when you were living.
They’ll say such a perfect match,
cut from the same cloth. No one,
not even the undertaker who
bathed and dressed you, will
notice the small copper disk
in your left breast pocket, resting
on your rock-still heart, a treasure
to take with you to the ground.
Sometimes Love Finds You
Like discovering water on the surface of the moon —
sometimes love finds you in the beautiful desolation
of a dark and empty heart. No river, no lake-
filled crater, no rain to streak the lunar sky, just
a meager film of dew laid down in endless night,
but gather up the spread-thin droplets on the freeze-
dried ancient sea — oh lonely sky-flung traveler —
wet your long-parched lips, slake your love-
foresaken thirst, and drink in, too, the light-
pulsed words that shine across space and time
like the bright and smiling face of the full moon
that casts its glow upon the hills and lakes,
coyotes and junkyard dogs, soldiers and sailors
and ships at sea, and lovers strolling hand in hand
on the tide-turned shores of a far-off watery world.
Nine Affirmations for Nine Nine Oh Nine
I will drink nine cups of coffee at nine;
I will plant nine acorns in nine holes
on nine hills;
I will serve nine platters of nine cupcakes
with nine candles;
I will send nine letters to nine editors
on nine serious subjects;
I will tell nine friends nine secrets
in nine languages;
I will feed nine sardines to nine cats
with nine lives;
I will follow the nine commandments
of the god of 729 names;
I will pleasure my ninth lover nine times
at her nine erogenous zones;
I will compose nine songs of celebration
for the eight planets
and Pluto, the cartoon dog.
Song of the Tui (quick first draft)
Imagining the song of the New Zealand Tui bird
from ten thousand miles away is apt work for a poet,
blind cartographer of the wild uncharted places
of the human heart. The English, on first glance,
named you Parson Bird as you are clothed in a dark suit
with a white collar, but no droning sermonizer are you.
Is “tui” the sound you call to the ears of the Maori?
They say you possess two voice boxes — a poet’s envy –
so that your lovely bellbird-like notes are underlain
with clicks, cackles, groans and the creaks of wooden ships
on rolling seas, a concerto for flute and precussion,
and like parrots, the gift of human speech. You sing
to the full moon above the sparkling South Pacific.
Your wings beat loud and crisp like the flapping
of thumbed stiff pages in a new book of poems
or the card sharp’s shuffling that signals the deal.
I see you banking through dark dense forest,
your crest dusted with yellow pollen grains, drunk
on fermented flax nectar and joyful flight and life.
I hear your voice in the tinkling spoon in a cup of tea
of honeybush, cinnamon, cloves, horopito and ginger.
Your song drifts on the gentle morning breeze
off the cool September seas of the Hauraki Gulf,
wending through vineyards and olive groves,
from the beaches to the hilltops, aloft with
the sweet and tender musings of a fanciful mind.
