Unbearable

Unbearable discipline and
Self-control. The world dull
green and white, pale
Except inside, greying bones;
Red embers warm muscles,
That bend to touch so gently
The world cannot see it.
They miss so much, the frightened
Eyes and damp nerves—
Everything that twirls past
Like an inconceivable cascade
Made hot with blood, mouth
And foaming torrent, too fast.
But to speak words that are
Less than a mask, a self-negation,
This is work—this is labor—and
A dying. The flood rages, drags
With an irresistible current, and
Every day struggling upstream
Tears the heart. But breathing
Quietly withdrawn, and longing
For another nearly-imperceptible
Touch—or worse, screaming,
Clawing at the breast, the mouth,
The jagged shoal—
Rather another hour
Of unbearable discipline
And self-control. 

A Word

With the first word

The skin begins to thicken

As if resisting revelation,

So that which and what

Conceal why—as a cloud

The sky. Perversely trying

By mouth and lips to exhume

The heart (or even just

The bones) of him or her,

Instead sounds plant a stem

Of not and never within

All cells and soil. Every small,

Separate moan—which

Speech cannot gather, as

The tide piles sand and rock

Into beach and steppe

Instead of one deft edifice—

Misses once and twice

With its inept escape.

It cannot breach your eyes

Or even slip

Through your smile

Because—it is true—

A word is less
Than you.

Aspens Song

The aspens, all overwhelmed

With snow, almost part as I come,

Come trudging glad up through the trees.

Green grass dots the drift-white waves,

Buoys lost in a bright argent sea.

My breath crystalizes even before

It leaves my lips, as if knowing its reach

Is frost-bound and it never will broach

The close canopy—that speech

Is beyond its meager capacity.

Cold is escape and the closeness

Of parting, longing, the distance of skin,

And the dimming of light.

When the mind tries a spark, yet insists

On the shadows that rush toward the night.

And the smoke curls higher

Than I ever could rise,

When we twirl and we spin
Round the fire.

I gather your hands, and your eyes

Cry my name,

And we dance till the night

Sings with light
And with flame.

And still aglow, I race down the foothills

Through tunnels of over-taxed limbs,

Silent but for the bark of my breath,

Lest a shock cause the trees to succumb

To the push of the snow and distress.

Before I’m halfway home your voice

Makes its plea to my chest and my lips

And my longing—they cool and crystalize,

Forming a wound and an ache in my hips.

And the blaze settles lower an inch.

Within sight of home, I again am afraid

Of loss, losing guileless arrogance,

Brilliant inconsequence—all the stuff

Of our busyness, hands holding thighs,

Lips on skin and the joy of enough.

And the smoke curled higher

Than I ever could rise,

When we twirled and we spun
Round the fire.

I gathered your hands, and your eyes

Cried my name,

And we danced till the night

Sang with light
And with flame.

EJR

Caught

Strike at what you do not

Understand. Hit it hard

Enough and perhaps it will run,

Will show its back. A strange

Back cannot repay. With head

Bowed, the sun cannot illuminate

Its face and so create a soul.

You were born a stranger,

Live a stranger, die unknown.

Childhood is the act of balancing

Resentment and infatuation—

Safe to cast out bedlam

And cosset slow familiarity.

Safe to lose yourself

In crowds without shouting

Your name across the sacristy.

The bare mouth and nose,

Eyes and chin, her face and hair—

The features of a carefree dream,

Or a decoy carefully concealed?

I know what seethes beneath

The surf that bubbles spiraling

Behind your brow. Now the flick

Of your glance stands to raise,

Then with one stroke to fell

The harmony you once enjoyed

When you were lithe and green.

The wave-front swells with every

Iteration of your longing,

Every heavy-hooded stare.

Will you let her wander free,
Or will she trip your snare?

EJR

Love, Perhaps

I choose to exclude ugliness,

Pettiness, spite whenever possible.

My own such contributions surely

Are enough and might suffice.

No, I may be able to keep my eyes

Gazing into your eyes, days or weeks

Of longing splintered uneven, hours

Of daydream fading, folded into you—

But your kindness lets the nervous

Pace (tending toward a foot race)

Relax, so we walk hand-in-hand

Instead. The heat of your damp palm

Against my skin; the alternating tug

(hoping for your hand back one more time)

And soft settle of our cupped hands,

Small in large, then tug and settle,

Tug and settle. This rhythm is a gift

Made possible only by your grace—

True beauty is potential, freedom

From the need to fit a form oneself.

The most beautiful sculpture may enfold

All the viewer’s ugliness—embrace it—

Or on the holiest day of the calendar,

It may join love and beauty in a brief,

Exquisite momentary gaze.

And thus tomorrow morning when you smile

And I smile at you upon waking,

And the taste of your upper lip is nothing

Like I ever guessed or knew—then

You’ll close your eyes, for the length

Of a sunbeam, perfect in your place.

And after a moment of joy, the dusty

Imperfection of the sunbeam bought,

I’ll pocket one more memory of grace

That’s freed me to remember love

As love, perhaps, was not.

EJR

The Boat

Stay with me

Today—

So that even when

You are not in my eye,

The pasts before you

And the futures

After would trouble us no more

Than the ocean

Surrounding my peculiar,

Leaky, slow and

Rather unseaworthy

Boat.

Whether you perch at the

Helm, vigilant steering—

And I love you there,

Bright in command,

Finding our way toward

That future

After, inevitably,

we both land.

You need me to navigate,

To rearrange the past

Preceding us,

Make a safe path.

Or near the glowing sunset

If you choose to guard

The forecastle,

To gaze back

across the bow

With your palm edge

Shielding the setting sun,

And suddenly I am able

Silently to look

At your face,

And finally know

The true color of your brow.

And noontime

Perhaps we stand along

The side rail,

Hand in hand,

And count the hours

As hills and valleys,

Portraits, not chalk

Marks on our cabin wall.

But still, I understand,

And hope you might as well,

That love is not an ocean

Or a plotted course,

Not the telltale wake

That dogs a ship,

Not even the salt spray

Beckoning us ahead.

Love is a peculiar,

Leaky, slow and rather

Hasty cobbled boat—

Mine happens to have

Virtually no crew.

The only rules that govern there,

That half (whichever gleans my mood)

Puts up with me today,

And half belongs to you.

EJR

Potter's Lake

The path was concrete,

Following some old idea of a slope

Down from gravel road

Over grass—lush to the threshold

Of overgrown, or perhaps

Neglected to the edge of overmuch—

Stuffed with such a bunch of snowdrops

And the occasional half-felled elm.

But the foot-worn secret track

Paced through a colonnade of thick-

Bloomed apple trees that had thrown

Their arms (or were they legs or lips

Or wings) agape, naked, buttery

Yellow-white, droplet-moist

With dew, with careless stickiness.

As I wound down again, again

I felt (and not unpleasantly)

The morning melt into a humid hum

Of birds and insects, blunt breeze

In this tree and that, wet leaves

And buzzing things tuned to a sleepy

Ceaseless mumble by the sun.

I would sit beneath the apple blooms,

And strum the grass with my feet,

And imagine that the pale white

petal-skin boughs, by bloom weight

Spread apart, were like my secret

subject, almost flesh and blood—

Hid by incompleteness in the

Pregnant space between desire

On that naked afternoon (sweating,

Breathless as one can only be alone)

And the few real visions in the grass.

For like the ripple, up-down, in a pool—

The slapping of a rock thrown with the wind

Into a waiting pond—there were two

Trajectories, opposing eptitudes:

   The dream I kept like a well-

Worn journal in my belt, borne

From one orchard to the next

To add a word, adjust a phrase,

Yet sound as constant as a sacred text.

   The waking held its humid sticky damp

Just out of bounds—too high a branch

However high I learned to reach.

I came day after day, awake, asleep,

To hunt until I found the apple root,

While summer after summer passed

Like damp and naked skin

Beneath my hands.

EJR