a little patch of basil

[ a little patch of basil under the woodshed ]

The weather is something you notice. I
remember dying of starvation during one protracted                       cold
patch, and a gentle turning of the
mind, walking up to you in a dream asking to borrow
sugar, so that we
all might be
blessed
with sweeter gifts. Kiss my polished green eyes or I
cannot
stay; I will sing in Italian until                                                my needs
are met. Like coming to the end of a
cul-de-sac in a fever dream, as you stare at the nimbus thinning behind the
houses to revea-
l the thuggish sea. Only it's not the
intolerable
sea, it's a heart of
pure murder
blowing open in the                                         storm; a familiar
weight
pressed down on the
                 shoulders, in one ear and out the
aorta. In my opinion, standing on
head before bright light.
        Only it's not light,
it's a cool patch
            of lichen
                         as seen                                                           from space. What we need is a cast
shadow taken from the crook of
branch that comes from shared                                   perspective.
In a day or two this will not be over. The situation is
something that you can type up during the
evening in a livid sweat. Only it's not
                             sweat, it's bath salts
melting on your cheek, keeping quiet about the
way it is more or
less
always hard to imagine that much                              freedom.
It took me years to recognize your body
as a landscape, and then my
delight which had not
diminished. I
was bent
over
examining the river, refusing to acknowledge the
huge brown cloud hung over the
garden. I had whispered not
every holy drop of rain hates you. Only this one.
                                                         Only the very fact that you
are writing this poem,
and the illusion that someone else is its
author, sighing my name far apart from every                       deluded

view.
* * * * *

did I fly south of my wound?

[ did I fly south of my wound? ]

How long had snow lingered in this awkward place?
The sun burns through snow. Time works this way
until nothing is left. Out on the lake
I stand frozen on the ice. The lake believes
profusely in its shallows, like I do
and everybody who just stepped out
all turned blue. I found I was alone,
or vice versa. I had hoped to find something
in my reflection because I wanted to love
the depth of my dreams. We have every right
to expect wonderful things, planned or unplanned,
or to create a sharp contrast by the softest light.
The sky is quiet, the flatness of afternoon
erases what I thought was thought.
I see the root of the matter: small bodies
in the wan and graying sky, with feeling,
planted in dark ground, wait for their sense
to flower against sky. A season is a novella
remodeling itself. The habit of my eyes recall
what freedom's like, from there I gave away.
What I remember most about winter
is how everything falls silent.
The birds are dead at last. Noonday gloom.
Tomorrow will be just like today.
Only every moment will change;
as I become (in)visible,
cracks in ice.
* * * * *

I'm nothing she hears

[ I'm nothing she hears ]
                                              (for CMF)

If at any moment the sky is full.
If you give milk away, by nightfall,
we'd see them coming, the clouds,
and need their cover. Is it your struggle
to take care of water? The shape of my voice
held its din in the evening
because my first syllable is already
heading toward historical realities.
Sometimes I write you love letters
because the grief of my lyric
resounds in the hundred-tongued flower.
It started to rain. My song never arrives,
it survives as the poem's desire
as the future is only promised.
That's the nature of a future:
thinner you grow, wandering words
only begin to imagine your image.
Time burrows into us; don't say it is
a mist. The rain gives another layer
of falling. Just another evening shower.
Sometimes, I find myself rocking to sleep.
It's cloudy. I must look like someone
unfamiliar with this dark. I claim
important silence in the urn
with you. I've had lovelier dreams
of talking and sweeping the floor
only I didn't think of myself
alone in a house. Shall I coax the mouth
of partnership everywhere you go?
One night I shut my eyes to keep
darkness out, I slipped under
the covers so that my shoots emerge
as angelbodies as the sun stretches
on the floor, one night, all over town,
your shadow was a caterpillar
and a butterfly, which I followed.
But now your whirring wings
speaks shadows. Here is history.
When I sleep alone I don't even know
that I don't even know what I'm missing.
* * * * *