Eyes

Easier
To shuffle mile
After mile
Eyes to ground
Or cast ahead but
Slightly down perhaps.
Not because
You'll miss the rain
Beading glassy on the small
Fruit of the tree
Behind the house.
Not because
You won't be burdened
With gray or darker gray
Or night.
After all, you might just catch
The rain
or sky
Reflected in a muddy pond
or broken window pane.
No, you may decide
To hide your brow
Beneath
The same blue hood
You wore when last you came.
Because you might
Be stranded at the bus
With just the eyes
Of an old love
And not recall her
Name.


EJR

I Lay

I lay on the closed-lipped earth,
Reaching downward toward a heart
So deep beneath I thought that part of me
Had broken off, had sunk, awoken
In some wet cave, some dark corner,
Or been rendered suddenly asleep—
Laid in a grave with no stone and no mourner.
I’d been sure the collateral of the hurt
Surrounding me was veiled only
By uncompleted sorrow, failed misery,
Refusal to accept a troupe of wounded
Whose footsteps fell in close proximity.
But your pale arms, parted lips
Persuaded me to wake. I stood watch
On hilltops, counting blossoms, seeds
And leaves. I ate nothing, drank your skin.
Sum the silver joy that drips from trees,
You said—and winnow shade from light.
It is wrong what you do, with tears
A bitter smile and your ecstasy a blight.
Come with me. Leave the barrow deep—
Seal it up with dirt and stone.
Tell everyone you used to walk alone
With footsteps droning in an morbid march.
We wander with our hands entwined, we come
Together, fall apart when our sorrow dies.
The rhythm of the world (its love)
Engulfs the earth—a flood, a sigh, a breath.
Drying tears and mastering our grief,
It drives the ecstasy into our very blood
And quiets wounds that slumber far beneath.

EJR

Lessons

She wended her way,
Winding
Hand-in-hand with anyone
Bleeding, broken-hearted.
Yesterday,
By their defeat defeated,
By their collapse
Collapsed. Perhaps
Today
Dear fingers knit, entwined
Could bind with one shy
Glance
Ten wounds, one each.
And then perchance
Tomorrow
She might love someone
Whose lips speak back
Ten lessons before the
Sun
Settles over the eaves
And warms the bedspread
Atop four arms, four legs,
One whole
Heart.

EJR

IV - Gently

Ornamented branches reaching, ivory
And rosy dimpled thimbles gathered rain.
A lone drop fell upon your upturned lip.
I kissed you there, then kissed again.
I kissed your eyes and nose and neck;
Your hand braced me. I brushed your back—
Breath and pulse, breast and hip—
I followed a wanton beam, a bead of sun
That trickled languid down, a drop
That dripped and lapped a lazy rivulet.
I prayed with mouth to your mouth,
Fingers opened you, immersing, both
The depth and surface rippling, floated
Gently from one wave crest to the next.
All these in the ever-wider space
Between two shuddered breaths.
And on exhale you rose again to meet
Me as I rose. The matted hair you swept
Out of your sweat-stung eyes, and time kept
With your bare chest on my chest. Clouds
Skidded by. The rain soon lashed the grass
And soothed your flushing skin.
Spread naked by the sun and rain, you came
Unwound twice more, first breast, then hip—
Began one dance, then scarcely parted lips
To moan my name before we joined again.
Your damp limbs tangled mine, one, two.
I wandered in and out of you.
The sodden silver moonlight dribbled down—
You wore a million droplets simply sewn
By our hands’ insistent rhythm in the dark.
I rushed to stroke your body, strike a spark.
You slowly burned my body as your own.

EJR

III - Either

I seem to have molded a statue,
An unclothed form in a fighting pose.
She from ambivalent clay arose
With not a portrait’s sly smile
But with arms and legs in tight
Formation, holding a weapon high.
Tribute or insult? Truth is daughter
Of both and friend of neither.
Whether victor or vanquished,
I cannot decide. Either to shield
Her protectively, a loverly medic,
Or fall and surrender, or at least
Call truce. I admit, were I her lover,
I would not have thrown her
Into battle, even the rear guard.
War is not too hard but too small,
Petty, brutal and forlorn.
She is too beautiful to waste
A day on something stained and torn.

She might squander with me
An hour, a day, a year—and we may fight
With petty words, or even end a time
Bereft and sad, forlorn—but war
Defeats the victor and victim both,
Its temper not cloud but storm.
Yet she stayed warm and soft and idle,
As if no blood or muscle could strain.
She remained moist and supple,
Like grass giving after the rain
When we lay together on the lawn
Gazing at my statue—and we laughed,
Recalling either of her earthly forms,
Because what sculptor needs a blade or staff
Who has a woman in his arms?

EJR

II - Together

From my driveway the entire vista,
Limited, but only as small as an
Observatory that projects a billion stars
On a spheric screen. A lounge
Where I lay to read the coded map:
The world unfolded crease by crease
In the sky and clouds, the trees—
Those inconsequential beads of leaves
All spun and flashed on the cottonwoods
That dominated distance, chittering like rain
Above the house across the street.
And I, deluded by the brush of wind
Impersonating hands that (unlike me)
Are not afraid to stroke real skin,
I close my eyes and, for a time that runs
As far toward tomorrow as I allow,
A perfect ghost lies next to me.
And together we are—both real and unreal—
Collaborators, she whispering secrets
And me believing them. Together
We lie still and uncover what is behind, inside,
Beneath the sky, the clouds, the trees.

As years go by, my ghost survives,
Stopping by most days to stroke my skin.
She holds my hand as days begin,
Sometimes whispers longing as I sleep.
We sit together as if watching a parade.
“Look at that woman’s breasts, and that one’s lips,
and that one’s eyes. I know a world where
You are not afraid to stroke her skin,
And you would watch her day begin
And catch her hips as she begins to rise.
That is what lies behind, inside, beneath—
It awaits your breath to breathe.
It waited at inception of the world,
Projected on the spheric sky.
It danced across your skin, the wind.
It needed only longing to survive."

EJR

I - Slack

We are tethered to this body,
With its well-known deceptions
And its naked betrayal,
Told to resist its repetitive insinuation—
Sinew, bone and blood, the pattern
Ravenous and perfect, storm and flood.
The most outrageous of all whispers,
Implying humid want is actually need,
The treason at the basis of it all.

If we sever the tether, we will fall
Like an astronaut weary of her lifeline,
Once freed of her anchor and oxygen,
Careening toward a cloud of stars—
I’ve avoided this folly and done the opposite.
What a discovery! That if I tug
On the rope as hard as muscle and blood
Can make flesh pull, the rope springs loose.
Severing the tether requires
Meditation or some similar bluff,
As if plugging ears will turn the whispers off.

Instead I’ve spread the spirit of the skin
Into every pore, all marrow, every cell—
Made this rotting vessel into a pleasure mill.
The apex of this fleshy metamorphosis
Is a rhythm of climax and despair.
It fills all chambers with a slow, unceasing
Stream, ending its pressure with release,
Then building to begin again.

And when I pause to eye the room
And smell our sweat and effort,
I wonder, briefly, how the air might taste
If my body were to bow and take its leave—
I suppose it might be clean and sweet,
Not blemished by the bite of blood,
The narcotic residue of sex.

Instead I stretch my slackened rope.
My arms and legs swing free. The knot, I test.
And tethered to this flesh I yet remain.
I choose once more to build, begin again,
And stain the air with what the skin wants next.

EJR