Leave Taking
1
Our happiness today relates to yellow
leaves. They are damp with dew,
bright against blue sky. They fall
away from trees moment by moment.
2
We learn in time how to use our
wings. They, too, have been torn
out of a sky. They green and grow
and grey and, gliding, take their leave
somewhere on the earth.
3
Walking far into an autumn forest your
body finds its way along the ground.
Your feet discover steps on heaps of
stars fixed in final flight. Falling
leaves around are hands touching your
covered arm. You lean down, pick them
up, take home a bright bouquet.
4
Yet running streams may lead you on
into a forest I will never see.
Then it will be up to you, for my sake,
to knock the dew from every bright
wing, finding a quiet place where
bodies can be flames. Never mind
my love feels cold on that lonely
day, for it will grow green, yellow, grey
again--and glide along with you.
from A Hollow of Waves (1983)
Snowfall on Chemult, Oregon
1
Then we were rich in nothing
but snow and fuzzy loose
clouds collecting deposits
in branches of spruce and
alpine fir.
2
We stood by under flurries
accruing slow interest,
our minds cashing white
checks in the cold.
3
Our hands in tight pockets,
we stretched like young trees
slaving to pyramid points
at new highs.
4
But always a wind rises
to share in soft profits,
a run on local banks or
sunlight's quick fall.
5
Now we know how best to
spend old wealth in clear-
ings, to find a living
trust in snow drop-
ping thaws.
from A Hollow of Waves (1983)
Schelomo
for Ernest Bloch
and Janos Starker
It's hard for us to imagine
my lover and I
the reason for fine tuning
the continuo of passion
and embrace
Our bowstrings break
from time to time
under stress
The wisdom of age
of endurance
is a heavy strain
leaving shadows under wrinkles
eroded varnish around finger-boards
oil on the surface of the wood
The building of the temple
and its destruction
lean on our songs
When rhapsody comes
we play on
looking up for direction
Our eyes shut
to a troubled past
Our hands cling
to an uncertain future
from A Hollow of Waves (1983)
Organ Music in Durham Cathedral
Laudate Dominum Chordis et Organo
Glass windows
are wings.
They stain
ascending tones
vibrating
up sandstone arches
shivering
in their modes.
Brown walls
and towers
do not descend
to grave
opinions
but pillar
altered
screens
and pipe
petrifying flight.
from A Hollow of Waves (1983), first appearing in The Durham University Journal (December, 1980).
Sibelius Museum
Turku, Suomi
Brown lacquer
instruments
are as silent
as grey cement walls
and the wrinkled stone
head of Sibelius,
but a record plays
and the sun turns
with the clouds.
Loud as light
the windows mourn
the rhythm
of dark, green forests
and a black steeple
rings with rain.
from A Hollow of Waves (1983), first appearing in Portland Review (Winter, 1981).
101 Going South
near the Santa Lucia Mountains
The dirt road takes you
up a hill
yellow with dry grass
you watch large oaks
fleeing like buffalo
There may be a locked gate
somewhere along the road
but your mind travels
over ridges into more valleys
yellow with the same dry grass
in flight with the same oaks
all the way to an ocean
where you rest
in a hollow of waves
moving unceasingly
shoreward
from A Hollow of Waves (1983)