Turtle vision
She moves through the fluent grass
with her un-Platonic waddle,
knowing there never was
a First Idea of Turtle,
only a festoon of turtles
tied mouth to tail through the possible
green, and all is well.
Her back, wide as a pancake,
granite to the predator,
centers her world in complete turtle.
Her eggs are gold and white,
smooth sun and moon, clenching
tight their turtle eternities.
By day, she meditates the earth
to a round swoon, a self-contained silence.
She beholds all opposites
clasped whole in turtle passion.
She glows in her testudine joy
like a Tiffany lamp with feet,
pleased with her own enlightenment.
By night, her ebony eyes
behold the sky curved round with turtles,
strung with turtle gods and angels,
and below, turtles all the way down.
A great turtle grunt announces
a new music of the spheres, each sphere
enshelled in the sweet bell of the universe.
And she asks you:
“What is heaven if not here,
where what I see
in my bright imagery
is all and only what I am,
and what I am is sum of all I've seen
in my patient, tortoise journey?”
The search
The stars are winding across the night
but can never arrive in time
to witness the purity of their first light.
Now they survive through years of distance
over a stable, a sigh, a discarded door,
or gaps in time between sight and imagination.
The waves are blue-green horses
leaping for stars they can never reach,
their manes woven from a thirst
they can never quench.
Their eyes contain the gentle faith of moons.
Their tails trail ghosts of drowned lovers.
The spiders weave their intricate targets
for the insects who long to be suns
spun through the web of heaven.
The spiders weave an endless hunger
for an innocence lost long ago.
And I?
I am hurrying, leaping, weaving words
in search of a boy I once knew
who guided waves of horses
through the web of the Milky Way
to teach the stars the wonder of their dreams.
Garden of silence
My wife’s questions, like doves, hide under their
wings answers they long to hear.
“What is he doing? Why is he bringing
us all this food?”
My father comes and goes, wordless as a cloud,
guiding wheelbarrows bulging with fertility,
lugging armful after armful of the unspoken
from his garden, to stock our root cellar.
I watch him, silently,
carrots pluming from his sun-browned hands,
arms cradling a squash so madly huge
it seems to mock the air around it.
Behind me, she follows him from open window
to open window of our new house,
holding our new baby, their eyes wide
at potato ganglia reaching back for earth.
Onions—bulbs of the earth’s Christmas--
Pumpkins, tomatoes, watermelon--
He has guided them all along the vine,
coaxed their stubborn flowers into fruit.
All without hello, goodbye, no answer
beyond these big tears of eggplant.
I could tell her he comes from a time
that comes and goes without saying,
and a place where love need only whisper
to find a song. Later, she and I
take down all the greeting cards we had strung
on their sterile wire, not saying one word.
Proteus’s Answer
On this shore I am lord of answers.
I have preserved all my monsters
in the dark depths of vision,
safe from the pride of pirates.
The way they rob you
is to make your body a mystery,
like a stranger that follows you
wherever you go.
If you wish your body to be your own,
embrace me until you find yourself
in every bird and beast I become.
They are your body, terrible and pure.
The dove’s dream of heaven,
the snake’s coiled cunning,
shark’s dark hunger, goat’s lustful beard--
all are immortal, and all are you.
Hold on for dear life as I flow
in and out of the grasp of death.
On the homeless sea you are child and mother,
your soul coiled tight within the other.
Then let the wind follow
its own ghost home.
Your mind will become a mirror
that reflects what fools cannot see.
If you can wrestle me into truth,
you will feel good news in your blood.
Take your prize and set me free.
The sea, strong lover, will be yours.
She moves through the fluent grass
with her un-Platonic waddle,
knowing there never was
a First Idea of Turtle,
only a festoon of turtles
tied mouth to tail through the possible
green, and all is well.
Her back, wide as a pancake,
granite to the predator,
centers her world in complete turtle.
Her eggs are gold and white,
smooth sun and moon, clenching
tight their turtle eternities.
By day, she meditates the earth
to a round swoon, a self-contained silence.
She beholds all opposites
clasped whole in turtle passion.
She glows in her testudine joy
like a Tiffany lamp with feet,
pleased with her own enlightenment.
By night, her ebony eyes
behold the sky curved round with turtles,
strung with turtle gods and angels,
and below, turtles all the way down.
A great turtle grunt announces
a new music of the spheres, each sphere
enshelled in the sweet bell of the universe.
And she asks you:
“What is heaven if not here,
where what I see
in my bright imagery
is all and only what I am,
and what I am is sum of all I've seen
in my patient, tortoise journey?”
The search
The stars are winding across the night
but can never arrive in time
to witness the purity of their first light.
Now they survive through years of distance
over a stable, a sigh, a discarded door,
or gaps in time between sight and imagination.
The waves are blue-green horses
leaping for stars they can never reach,
their manes woven from a thirst
they can never quench.
Their eyes contain the gentle faith of moons.
Their tails trail ghosts of drowned lovers.
The spiders weave their intricate targets
for the insects who long to be suns
spun through the web of heaven.
The spiders weave an endless hunger
for an innocence lost long ago.
And I?
I am hurrying, leaping, weaving words
in search of a boy I once knew
who guided waves of horses
through the web of the Milky Way
to teach the stars the wonder of their dreams.
Garden of silence
My wife’s questions, like doves, hide under their
wings answers they long to hear.
“What is he doing? Why is he bringing
us all this food?”
My father comes and goes, wordless as a cloud,
guiding wheelbarrows bulging with fertility,
lugging armful after armful of the unspoken
from his garden, to stock our root cellar.
I watch him, silently,
carrots pluming from his sun-browned hands,
arms cradling a squash so madly huge
it seems to mock the air around it.
Behind me, she follows him from open window
to open window of our new house,
holding our new baby, their eyes wide
at potato ganglia reaching back for earth.
Onions—bulbs of the earth’s Christmas--
Pumpkins, tomatoes, watermelon--
He has guided them all along the vine,
coaxed their stubborn flowers into fruit.
All without hello, goodbye, no answer
beyond these big tears of eggplant.
I could tell her he comes from a time
that comes and goes without saying,
and a place where love need only whisper
to find a song. Later, she and I
take down all the greeting cards we had strung
on their sterile wire, not saying one word.
Proteus’s Answer
On this shore I am lord of answers.
I have preserved all my monsters
in the dark depths of vision,
safe from the pride of pirates.
The way they rob you
is to make your body a mystery,
like a stranger that follows you
wherever you go.
If you wish your body to be your own,
embrace me until you find yourself
in every bird and beast I become.
They are your body, terrible and pure.
The dove’s dream of heaven,
the snake’s coiled cunning,
shark’s dark hunger, goat’s lustful beard--
all are immortal, and all are you.
Hold on for dear life as I flow
in and out of the grasp of death.
On the homeless sea you are child and mother,
your soul coiled tight within the other.
Then let the wind follow
its own ghost home.
Your mind will become a mirror
that reflects what fools cannot see.
If you can wrestle me into truth,
you will feel good news in your blood.
Take your prize and set me free.
The sea, strong lover, will be yours.
