We gather together in waving wild fields–
forgotten, fattening, old Father Big Bang;
promiscuous, pregnant, new Mother Presence;
twinning quarks singing duets; you and I dance,
following, not following, borrowed patterns
under this blue sky that will not come again.
Category: sestinas
stretch
Last night, from the ferry, I saw a long stretch
of soft mauve reflecting the sharp yellow lights
of Brooklyn. It was a wisp until I saw
the Verrazano, the tops of its towers
and cables were not there; the realization
of a vast expanse of cloud, pressing unseen,
shade
she conspires to be
in what she is limpid shade
beyond the hot sun
but holding it close
she is the ocean she scents
holding sky and light
The Rothko Room at The Phillips Collection
entering stillness
falling into muted light
raking in silence
resonating tones
falling into flowing shades
of slow shifting moods
shadows
before this world lies
down in metronomic time
before loss shadows
absence into space
before I fall out of you
nothing sole awakes
Postlude: Consummation
Viola: Why must I ever be the thrusting “man,” wild,
uninvited, in this wordy conjoining?
Olivia: Not undesired, once heard, I . . . You are . . . O love,
truly to know you, just one time, in the flesh.
Viola: What’s the sense in a fleshy consummation?
Do I not stand before you, an unveiled nude?
tall grass prairie
again I have lost
these lines have gone prairie wide
flared into the wild
thoughts grown into grass
and the west wind sweeps the dry
waves over my head
misses
trying to make sense
of a sensational miss
the sparks of the sun
on the screen between
me sensing and these black words
on the white background
trees
the cold strips the trees
branches arch against the light
a spatter of leaves
shivers in the wind
shadows tremble on the wall
i rake up the words
there
there’s always a there
there in a blaze of the sun
bouncing off a black
street into my face
and over there send the word
where a bay glows blue
dust 