Sex is an inverse mountain,
when it’s sex you shouldn’t have –
you coast gleefully, carefree to the top –
a bicycle ride down to the highest,
perfect view –
and Oh what a view! but then
(Oh what a view) you’re not
atop it but under it –
that was not the climb, this is,
a getting out from under and
not dying, one hopes,
from a place you should never have been.
Why again news, no more news
of divorce. I hadn’t heard of these two,
hadn’t dreamed they’d divorce.
A tree sways in the wind, but doesn’t
do as trees normally do, it cracks
like a painting
into pieces.
Why was there no woman of tears
and soft hands to go to this tree,
and massage it before it died?
We could both be in there
still looking – laughing –
what are you doing? –
wondering
where will this go?
If I could but draw will from the well
to fill my words –
to pray it not say it all the way through.
I have friends afar,
moonlight people whose messages
arrive in the morning.
I answer and am
to them
a moonlight people too.
I am the box
lid open
not big enough for God
so flat now
wide as a box can be
Me, the refugee?
My red-white eye
and blue blue sigh
and hope for self-evident truth?
You have given me to pray
and it’s like a slow tornado.
I’m sucked up in circles
and at the top am in the sun
and I say,
“Take me! Take me!”
But no, now I know
it’s not a prayer.
It’s a poem and me
fleeing again. I see
the people I love
and so slide down to them
through the last of the poem,
that old fire escape we had at school.
My daughter asked me what my purpose is
and I saw a flower.
It was blooming, but I
wasn’t yet, but would
yet, I hoped.
Bakery girl,
what will rid us of your sadness?
You’ve carried it and still,
and I as well,
as bells have tolled
and dusks have walled
alleys away in silence.
Utrecht Journal 