Spider's Web

from peach tree green leaves hangs
spider's web glistening with dew
the morning sun shining through

On the Horizon

So to speak and so to find
He became like a thundercloud
Untouched by time
Pushing his way directly
Out and up and through
They were with and, then, without
Conclusively coming to terms with
Almost certainty.

Dream

Asleep I have never
been able to dream.

Three months ago
Sleeping on my left side
A crash, very loud in the forest
Woke us and we knelt holding
Each other and with a secure grip
I pulled her to me and
Soon she was riding on top.

Asleep I have never
been able to dream.

Desert

From the first she suspected
The grass that led down
I know she barely realized
I watched them
Her fingers in front
In their car, the radio
A cool rain falling
I began to drive out
Into the desert that day

Bed

The shock of the inept
Thrusting in his bed
Where they had tested
The notion that they
Were not far from each other.

As he looked back
She did not look back.

The Red Drapes (for Roman Polanski)

She was totally paralyzed after
A few glasses of champagne and
After all that noise, she
Stayed there and opened up
He examined her, approving
She did not consider
What had occurred
When she saw the heavy red drapes
Early in the morning over
And around her long legs
"Goodbye," he said and
"You figure it out."

Echolia

As more of a reflex
He shook his head
And with it the echoes
He still had to punctuate
Which would someday
lead him to himself

The End of It

Fingers flickering at buttons
His hands were clamped over
Because she mentioned wanting
He guessed he did understand
Nothing serious and certain
Trying to imagine for awhile
The end of it suddenly
Reading into it what they wanted
They had gotten bored
But still nothing had been done.

A Country Song

He could get mean as many
But being too lonely alone
Like a dancer she kept turning
And they laughed.

She found him too late to
Tend him and care for him
And they knew it too
Only there's no chance at the top
But she felt one down
she could stop.

Anyone For?

It ought to have been as simple
As stepping through the door
In white shirt and pants saying
"You are now going to tell me
What I want to do."

The Harvest

Fiona Robyn has posted another one of my poems on her blog A Handful of Stones.

Robyn says that "a small stone is a polished moment of paying proper attention."

sitting in the ginkgo room
barefoot
surrounded by books
harvesting words

Missed Connection

Lost hearts try to contact me elsewhere
As I loiter sanguinely –
That is to say cheerfully,
Confidently; optimistically –
At the séance where the medium's
Cat slumps in a window cleaning
Her fur in the reflections
Of the flaming sky.

This poem was a response to prompt #83 at Read Write Poem. That was fun. I'll certainly do it again.

Times Square, 1973

This poem was written to be submitted to a poetry contest (see below) but I missed the deadline by a day. Oh, well, I don't think this is exactly what they were looking for.

Bright Lights Big Verse: Poems of Times Square sponsored by the The Poetry Society of America and the Times Square Alliance to help celebrate Times Square, and the qualities that Times Square represents —- diversity, desire, dynamism and the marriage of commerce and culture —-through poetry.

A smell barely remembered reminds her
of the day when the two of them met
and went to a Times Square hotel. She
should have known better than to skip
lunch and pick him up. He sometimes
complained when she did. But the fashion
has changed, she said. In the room,
she imagined rather than felt
the breeze from an open window
that he gazed out, humming quietly.
She asked him to come nearer and like
a long fall slowed she reached out
and touched him and it stood up and
went hard into the pink and together
they moved rhythmically. They could not
stay with it long but he could move
as she moved and then he shivered slightly
and with delight shuddered. They turned
aside and she stared at the lights beyond
as if awakened on the other side.

In the Trees

i was all alone and waved and yelled "away"
in the trees because of them
if one of us -- in print, in person --
gets to where the light fades
it's all over
for your familiar surroundings

The Stars

and there beside me
he would stand and say
she had never asked
why bother to leave
too obscure, the stars,
he explained

With Sails

with sails on rough seas
towards themselves rather than
away from one another

and nobody would even have to know
what he sees peering perplexedly away
i said bitterly to him alone

to be found that way...
to be anything other...
to think that when...

The Air Above

amusing to consider something i said
thirteen years ago when we first met
in a single cavern of this house
it was not you who agreed to give
could not possibly have been you
the air above places has got to be
right and all, i said

Remembrance

she saw it as nothing
much to remember as long
as she had never felt
a desire to do so before

it was one of her rare
impulses of joy

ours; we were done
stood at one end
in the same darkness
she seemed very quiet

Dreaming

he had not seen why
could not ask even for an explanation
he dreamed about it to repeat it
it keeps things close, he said,
even if they were not
far away, though, before
and, it seems, were more near

A Slow Twist

he's being carried past us.
it is, as a thing, a new way of looking,
a slow twist,
a kind of indignation.
we still feel it, though,
but not as much as before,
this emptiness in the middle.