Fall

Dream

The woman runs in a grove of firs,
red warmups a contained flame
along the plotted corridors,
face a mask neither tame
nor wild, a static ecstasy.
Beyond the needled hush lies
a meadow with an oak tree;
a square white house justifies
the thin, deciduous, autumn light.
A tire swing gathers the sun,
leaves caught on its inner bight,
where her eyes fix as she runs, runs.

Something in her progress might
suggest pursuers or pursuit,
but not the barest hint of flight;
only an air of resolute
abstraction, cool, suffering
suffused with eagerness, disdain
for what the next strides will bring,
as if pain or the end of pain
were waiting just beyond the rows,
as if grief or the end of grief
might wait in the swing, the meadow,
be caught in the veins of a spun leaf.

Visit

What if, one
sun soaked, most particular afternoon,
that treacherous forsythia there
should shrug from its complaisant splendor
into flame? Should flare and thunder
with Immense authority
your name?

Insist (from
the safety of your belly, face in the grass)
upon current and immaculate credentials:
who but demons wheedle in
incendiary shrubbery?
This protocol observed,
lose your shoes.

Ask Him,
(your most mollifying modulations)
what on earth could bring Him to your
(His) humble and unworthy garden.
Say something nice about His light,
the diamond edge of His cast shadows.
He likes that.

Beg His
forgiveness for the rucksack of sin you dragged
into the world by your belly. Show Him the scar.
Then, scorched pure by His
consuming grace, be just: do not
omit to thank Him for His
mysterious ways.

It may now
be proper to most obligingly inquire
what He might require of His servant
(you.) No frivolous visitor,
Good Landlord, He never comes
without His itemized agenda.
He’ll tell you.

Be sure
that to His purpose you are the optimum instrument.
You might be asked to build some small apocalypse,
or become the vessel of transmission
for some entirely new disease.
True, it may only be time to
clean the ovens.

No matter what,
accede. You can’t outrun His awful will.
The only possible alternative
is to cast yourself forthwith at the heart
of His redeeming fire, dare Him
to spit you out alive: turn
the hose on Him.

Whitetails

Three does, at the corner
where the arclit
hexagon had stopped them
far beyond their tracks
to puzzle some meaning
from the hieroglyphs,
watch me scrape along
the pavement with my face
turned toward the moon.

So still are they,
hidden in the brilliant
copper camouflage
of municipal light, so
acutely do they mime
the transparency
of the air surrounding them
that I only see them as
I step off the curb.

I freeze, but before I can ask
what they could possibly want
from our metallic streets,
our steel trees that sing
with the rain, commanding
YIELD, or CAUTION, or STOP,
there is suddenly just a riffle
of hooves on warm asphalt
fading into the air.

Spirits

The veil between the worlds is wearing thin.
As October hobbles to its chilly close,
the spirits slip their summer discipline
to haunt our porches in their parent’s clothes.

Monsters jostle demons in the streets,
the walking dead are jolly as they rot;
it’s difficult to say, of those we treat,
who might be whom, and who may not.

But soon enough November falls in place,
with a question no one ever asks:
what kind of creatures would we face
if grownups finally put away their masks?

Happy Birthday, Dyl and Syl

Dylan Thomas


The force that through the green fuse drives the flower

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
Turns mine to wax.
And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.

The hand that whirls the water in the pool
Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind
Hauls my shroud sail.
And I am dumb to tell the hanging man
How of my clay is made the hangman's lime.

The lips of time leech to the fountain head;
Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood
Shall calm her sores.
And I am dumb to tell a weather's wind
How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.

And I am dumb to tell the lover's tomb
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.

Sylvia Plath


Poems, Potatoes

The word, defining, muzzles; the drawn line
Ousts mistier peers and thrives, murderous,
In establishments which imagined lines

Can only haunt. Sturdy as potatoes,
Stones, without conscience, word and line endure,
Given an inch. Not that they're gross (although

Afterthought often would have them alter
To delicacy, to poise) but that they
Shortchange me continuously: whether

More or other, they still dissatisfy.
Unpoemed, unpictured, the potato
Bunches its knobby browns on a vastly
Superior page; the blunt stone also.

A Day at the Arboretum

Now the helicopters come,
now the abracadabras
of the great abscission,
as the trees spin down
their summer architecture,
provision and shelter
for their germinating young,
fuel for the fires of autumn.

Watching my daughters run
with their recalcitrant kite,
breeze a straggling lamb
behind, I wonder why
I feel so strange lately;
why now, when everything
showed signs of coming
together, I should look
down to find my hands
involved in such confusion,
such an inchoate music
of kite strings and leaves.

The Shell

I took the conch down from the shelf
to listen to the sea,
but at my ear a silver elf
sang my name to me.

A voice of silver, high and wild,
no human throat could form,
as if an ectoplasmic child
were crying in a storm.

I held it there and strained to hear
a message, grammar, sense,
but just a syllable was clear,
simplistic eloquence.

The carols of the Lorelei
cost sailing men their souls;
the Sirens’ fetching lullabies
peopled Grecian shoals.

I put it down; its whisperings
could charm the curios;
I knew that there are certain things
it’s better not to know.

But the voice was never in the shell,
the voice was in my head;
fires of heaven, fires of hell,
I followed where it led.