—for Keith Waldrop
A relationship is the
flux that binds
the tentative directions
the mind pulls together
An adept sense
at finding other
Affinities
Intimacies
A man casts off his knowledge
as he casts off
his calendar body
A worn bargaining
The underneath mind
grows more and more
haunted
By liminal attachments
By a self-gathered credo
as the remedial force
The poet is transfixed by
what is not
nameable
Beneath notice
An internal dialogue
Ecstasy or torture?
In the beginning
A gamble
Wisdom or desire?
Crossing a commons
The snow at twilight
These silences written
within the mind
imposter gods
Take account
You are your own
ghost
Life is various. But
disastrous in its fusion
of sadness with vitality.
Yearnings are dear enough, then,
the “I” finds itself thwarted
by the vicissitudes of loss.
Like a name drawn in sand
an alliance has gone missing.
Now ghosts haunt the kitchen
like fragments of memory
walking backward
into a photograph. Where
life commemorated life.
Slow steps remain. The
ideal toward. Kindred with
bluebells. A bird–soul. Trembling.
It happens like this:
Majestically,
the pigeons spill down
a few steps away
on a hot summer’s day
on Broadway
Jostling one another
All the dust, and the mess
I’ve become
overtaken
by unevenness
Within the days
Between the hours
All the dollars I’ve spent
on a life out of balance
when there’s all this
cosmic consciousness
within a kiss
and the I AM
that haunts the hand
in my pocket
searching for the key
hole
All those mistakes ago
Like everyone else,
I feed them
a few cents of bread
but it’s the thirst
no one thinks about
It’s from this thirsting
That I look out
A co-presence
of moments
blurring the window’s
glow
All the pigeons
All the dust
And this constant
I am
Cosmically
Always, just
a few steps away
How do you register
a life
gone out
Nothing properly ends
but is re-destined
Rudiments of encounter
then parting
Always en route
to refinement
One becomes less and less
haunted
by living
By the days before one
By what time remains
between time
and its end
The body is
a conduit
And grace
its divine distillation