A Lack of Resolution

 

There enters January from the left,

A grinning rush of sudden death. I say,

Says January, You know that’s not true.

I kill the pine-bore beetles, and I spread

The grass with green—potentially. I turn

Away. I have no time for this. I’ve made

Friends with the spring. It promised me a shoot,

A pistil, and the grounds to make them work.

January wears cold around its lungs,

A heart of hoar, the frost that doesn’t care

Who freezes whom. It has its ice on you,

Its arabesques of cars out of control,

Its night where streetlights groan about the dark.

Somewhere the exiled cupids fletch their arrows.

What Was Unmoved

 Winter was all it took

To right the summer’s wrong.

It started with a song.

It ended in a book.

Neither could ever say

All that the snow explained

Or why the day it rained,

Geometry washed away.

What was unmoved was ice.

The song of summer failed.

The song the book retailed

Would never again suffice.

Tales Out of School

 

Happily ever after, says the wolf,
Picking his teeth with Granny’s rib; the Prince
Is thinking he should let the zygal float
Against the oobal, now a muttonchop
Graces the front of his pink currency.

From hard-boiled eggs and crumbly cheese and pears
A girl can make a picnic, but a myth
Requires meat, not osiers; the bird
Who doles elusive clues is never served
Fajita-style. Granny works best for that,
Digesting in her aged, sinewy way,
Her juices turned to lupine sentience
And thigh muscle and slaver. When we grow
Old ourselves and have grandchildren to tell
The soothing psalms of bedtime, we shall lie
And say, The woodsman split the wolf in twain,
And Granny tumbled out and smoothed her dress
And baked a cake and spread the counterpane.
The child will sleep. We too shall check the yard
For prints. And listen for the wolf. Aha.

The Promised Ants

 

In the Kingdom of the Blind the one-armed man

Got strangled by a python. In the dirt

The ants formed marching bands and bit the dust,

Then spat it out. The songs the flicker sang

Were all percussion, made my chimney ring,

And sounded like a salesman on the phone.

The ghosts don’t bother me. When we play bridge,

I am the dummy, and we all fall down,

Each time a little slower, till we rise

Like half a loaf. And half of me recalls

That we were promised ants, and it was kept.

The locusts don’t come round much any more;

But one-armed men keep showing up to ask

If I would deign to donate to the blind.

Oh, Pancho

         —Cisco, you are loco in the head

Cisco hath murdered sleep, the sheriff said;

But Pancho told him when the deed was done,

They were eating tortillas somewhere else,

In Mesa Verde, which was dun and bare.

Your hands are scarlet, said the deputy,

Incarnadined or something. Pancho said,

The tumbleweeds tell all you need to know.

Cisco brushed grit off his embroidery,

Adjusted his somebrero, and pursued

The banker's daughter, calling to his fate,

It is the east, and I am someone's son.

The sheriff was not all that mollified.

As usual, they had to flee the town,

Eat tepid victuals in a desert night,

And top their frijoles with unsummoned stars.

Lid & Latch

 

Inside the damp, torn box a bit of fluff—

Bright hair by Donne. Might be a web. Or lint.
We won't find out today. All lost, grave stuff
Waits for last things. This box, though, packs a hint
Of all the rest: we lie against the grain.
We take up too much time and too much rain

For bone to carry breath. His new, clean shape
Will grieve the man who lived for gasp and catch,
Who free of taint, not bent to bare his nape,
Will climb back in, pull down both lid and latch,
And while his thoughts last, think of sweat. In pain
He saw the light and left it. Bring the rain.

True Confession

 

Entschuuldigung, she said, which was a lie,

Excuses absent, and not wanting one,

Impenetrable of motive and as stumm

As onyx.  Not a tear or comely dab.

Just Tell me what you want, and I'll decline,

A heavenly bosom heaveless.  One supposed

That angels felt this way when sinners pled

Post-mortem for relief, their ichor still

A differentiation from the dead,

Though God had mercy, theoretically.

Me a culprit?  Well, I guess I am,

But DNA's a bitch, and time will toll.