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

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