Zucchini Flowers
(for Marisa)

the night you fried me
zucchini flowers,
bright yellow blossoms
puckering in hot oil,
my other big romance
was coming apart,
and here we were,
just friends, laughing together,
peering into the pan’s
sizzling pool.

sputtering, battered flowers
made me think of horns, heralds;
almost dangerously hot, 
we nibbled them;
lips glazed with oil,
we barely mimed a prelude
to jumping in bed…

after, I looked down and saw myself
lie there next to you...
and I wondered,
why am I not down there?
with you?  with me? 

that happens a lot these days;
in a room I wonder:
why here?  why not there?
still I know it's never then,
always now, this moment.

the instant we name things--
love, loyalty, last night--
something slips away;
we finger increments
like dominoes,
we whip up alibis, ideals:
we smile to hide what’s hiding
in the undercurrents.

twisting in love's tourniquet,
we clutch and tumble, procreate:
sowing, nesting immortal seed.
one eye on the clock,
we foster unfathomable kids,
fashion the book of their becoming
and their unbecoming.

we watch them rise and walk
fragile as flowers,
slip-streaming in our wake,
shedding moments
that cut like diamonds,
mirrors to watch ourselves.

more and more now,
as I shave another day's growth,
my father's face floats in the mirror
like a drowned man's
rising to the surface.

-2004

After the Rains

Deep thunder rolled last night
after the crackling white-gold ganglia
ripped the roiling dark
as I lay in my bed alone in Connecticut
thinking of a thunderstorm in Paris:
dome of the Invalides flaring sudden gold
under a Gallic sky’s electric veins,
whipped umbrellas shining
under pouring plane trees as we raced home,
dodging lemony headlights of cars
splashing over rain-sleek streets...

As my windows flared in Connecticut
I saw your face, its impish grin
beckoning me back
To our drenched tango,
doorway to dripping doorway;
puddles on the parquet floor
as we shed all and leapt for refuge
Into the happy bed, shivering,
gasping, locked in a lover’s knot.

-2004

Eros Cooking

Purple eggplant's cool, succulent contours
speak to my hand of absent breast, backside.
Melanzana, name like a symptom in Italian;
aubergine in French, a mother's lullaby.
I peel and slice these latent souvenirs
with a worn chef's knife
and dust the floury-looking flesh with salt.

From sweet Vidalia onions,
I disrobe the parchment skin,
snick off fat slices, chop them fine,
bucking the blade,
rocking myself, grieving wailer at a wall.

I firk out stems from ripe tomatoes, quarter them,
slick away the runny seeds
from each segment's juicy crevice.
Zucchini dreams, pale summer squash
I split and slice to half moons destined for hot oil.

The knife kisses through the glistening skin
of sweating, red bell peppers,
hearts alive in my aching hand.

My fingers palp the chicken breast,
tear away the pebbly skin,
slip in the flaying blade and feel my way,
tenderly parting meat from bone, my last illusions,
fleck out yellow fat.

The hot oil pools like blood; chopped garlic
assembles itself into a fragrant lace:
balsamic, thyme, a dash of cumin, cracked pepper
create a pungent censor of the sizzling pan,
its stark aroma resurrecting our imbroglio.

After the dismemberment, the rinsing of hands,
the mingled juices drain, dry out.
That's often how it ends:
the cutting board, the chopping block,
postmortem of a fine romance,
when Eros cooked and Psyche got sauteed.  

 -1997 

Godson (for John-Eric)

...and so we climb from primal medium,
my six-year-old godson and I,
shedding the sea’s cold, microbial soup.
At low tide, the dock ladder stretches skyward:
he dawdles, daunted by the steep ascent
as we scale its slippery rungs,
his slow, selective fingers seeking bare wood
that crusty barnacles and hairy weed
have not yet commandeered.

Normally, he cartwheels Ninja-like through life,
constellating shin guards, Power Rangers,
Lego blocks, Transformatrons,
guns, swords, hockey sticks--
the pointed furniture of phallic quest,
exploring with his wiry, tensile body
to sense what wounds it can survive.

But now he’s chilled, skinny shoulders quivering,
blue-point lips set in a brittle grin.
The sun beats down a lifting breeze,
rocks radiate a reassuring shimmer
and we hunker down to soak up heat.

Supine on warm, weathered planks,
we toast on separate turfs of terry cloth
until, still shivering, he slowly edges
towards my big, blue towel.
His chilly fingers spider up my arm,
absently explore my ear, my chest, count hairs;
we talk of shaving, my white whiskers,
his dad’s dark rasp, of growing up, going gray.

His bony knee, the foot that kicks with gusto
at soccer ball or sneak-attacking brother,
crabs over mine, grazing for contact;
he scrunches close for heat and comfort,
snuggling as we chatter on:
oh, once I had a mustache,
no, I don’t think your dad ever did...
Yes, you’ll have to shave...
Or grow a beard: hey, how about that?
John-Eric with a long, white beard?

He laughs, a gut-sprung chuckle, tickled
at the notion or the image
and, utterly absorbed, keeps on driving
his phantom tank across my chest...
Then, ears tuned to his kid’s radar,
he rises to a sudden, distant call:
warm now, dry, smiling with secret knowledge,
he runs off towards the welcoming house.

Drenched in this innocence,
I watch him leap the wide porch steps
in a single springbok moment
and I marvel. 

 -1996  

 Candidate

Into the spotlight, he erupts:
a single, grinning spangle,
explosive in silky white and sequin silver,
crouched above stampeding double stallions,
one hand imperiously aloft, the other
clutching for dear life
to whip and double reins.

The silver beam slashes him through smoke,
turns his electric, madman's smile blue
charges his clockwork eyes with crimson frenzy.
Above the white, churning rumps, his whip trails sparks,
dancing like lit dynamite
as hoofbeats stitch woodchip explosions
up the shuddering circus floor.

Almost mechanical, his ghost-lit stallions
pitch and heave,
racing this wiry, crazed Colossus
against the spotlight's swinging scimitar,
his bright-captured back stained with exertion,
his splayed hand scrabbling for balance.

He circles and circles,
charioteer, pale rider, Panzer fuhrer,
shedding his parabolic promises in a stuttering glare;
he races towards us and away,
towards us and away---
a wracked, familiar, twisting dream.

The drumrolls cannonade into the dark,
trumpets whine and kick the crowd into applause:
drops spring like diamonds from the stallions' flanks
as he plows on,
through rolling smoke
blazing haybales
reeking bloody history
grinning his ironclad
politician's grin.

-1988

No Night Falls--California '93

As night ascends in San Francisco,
light retreating skyward, the dark
creeps up like vapor to blacken the ivy;
overhead, a single jet,
belly burnished orange gold,
stitches the deepening, cloudless blue
with silent, silver winks...

shrubbed, luxuriant darkness
draws in the black dog's grizzled head,
cools his eyes' glittering, green filaments;
the roof's serrated, shingle edge
turns deadly sharp against the dying light
as half a steel moon rachets up through boughs....

alone in a rich man's garden in California,
held only by an invisible thread,
I watch my life
crawl along the silver web
that must tomorrow
be remade. 

SACHEMS (For Christian Conrad)

We sleep like the owl,
graze like the old buck:
the young ones come to us
They come
They come
Yet not as they once did.

We lift dim eyes,
sniffing wind that locks the river,
near forgetting how we sang,
drank the smoke,
ate the magic,
danced the dark dreams
to the taut drum.

Wind in cat-tails
reminds us of duties,
reminds us of secret paint,
blood rite:
the boy swallowing fear,
the maiden’s night-cry,
eyes like copper points
in smokey firelight.

We are sachems,
spirit foxes dozing in winter thorn.
We are the dreams:
bear’s breath, fever spot,
broken knife…

We are the woman’s oiled spine
gleaming in the cook fire
like a dusk river;
we are the milk-bead
the child wears on his cheek;
we are deer-feast, empty trap.

What we remember flows like water
smoothing pebbles:
old battles, gasping pony, arrow sting,
trophies torn in blood…
Like cranes, we gather up our legs
and tighten the blanket.

Here we sit in winds that carve us,
crag foreheads prowing the tufted sea:
we watch young eagles soar above the surf,
watch flinty stars that scratch dark sky
like fires through door-flaps far away.  

 -1976            

TO A SOLITARY QUAIL (for Lucy)

Shy old seed sniper, come to strut and dust in sun:
on riffling wings, he swats the sweet vermillion silence
when sudden footsteps fire him from fencepost perch
where he sat to slake his thirst with shaken dew.

Hearts stamp like hooves when he, erupting, sails,
shedding his bob-white's dawn-brightening quaver,
skimming the drowsy lespedeza, a fist of feathers
clenched now in thorns, his rose-hedge citadel.

Quail mornings, we walked the hemlock woods at dawn,
sharing spider-web silver and blue spires of sun,
stood sipping tin-cup coffee while we smoked,
savoring the cricket's watery warble,
when quail would be up on feed, hens broody in covert,
still lazy from tail-tied sleep.

Then that solitary--his own anxious bird, we said--
sauntered off to dine all by himself
on breakfast berries under the split rails.
He was the child we fused and lost,
soft anodyne who salved our widening grief,
made morning glad since we got up
and dined alone like him, puttering cups, toast.

By mid-September, quail calls stopped.
When winter's serious business closed in tight,
we looked out for him to bring us close again.
But hawk and hunter menaced; he'd gone off.

Old plucker of the dark poke cherry, I miss
that stinging flight, that jaunty solitude.
And I still hear the lost child's cry,
the unborn, urgent, yearning quaver
that lamed and baffled our small history.

But I have learned again to walk a little:
new sallies-forth, new shy beginnings,
both curious and wary just like yours,
promise other broods to strut and dust in sun.

-1963

LOST FACES

-2004