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To Students...
RAYMOND ROSELIEP
IN THE DRY LIGHT
St. Vincent's
I painted myself in a corner,
by a window though
where swallows are crazying sky
and dry light balances
watersilk feather,
black currant eye-
look at the wishbone shape
those batty birds are making,
they polish their feet on wind.
Cross your legs, Jack Horner,
before your stringbean body
sheltered by a grave
and cross-topped roof.
Under the eaves I saw a man
knock down a bluejay nest,
two the cat didn't pounce on
decorate my sill;
a robin weaves from her woven house
with a charity of worms,
angling for the Audubon.
Robin's not a bird of one love:
over & over I play the words
to the tune of an orange nerve,
crowning myself
poet of rank and tenure
-the laureate of that cornfield
makes only cricket poems,
but I give him credit
the way he strikes his vocal
RAYMOND ROSELIEP
wings with his feet.
Soles are frayed flowers,
I touch mine gently as a girl.
A girl is dandelion down,
blown and blown and blown.
A boy's made man too soon.
The sanctus of the mass
falls early,
a priest hangs
on the edge of nothing
with his fingers buttered.
Oh Tl keep a fingerhold
on my patch of sky, ragged jack
pine and Red King's sawing.
To sit on the threshold of sound
is to catch the click of a key,
feel the starchy noise
of duckwhite duck pants,
hear in your streaming throat
the swish of many pebbles
colored as Joseph's coat:
sound is a key turning
in me like red crackling leaf.
A punishment of roses
bare leaves from Sister Ellen's
gift fluttered to a standstill
from their olive bottle.
Bourbon fountains bubble
my important wall,
every square inch of a Rembrandt
loved by Rembrandt.
Down the runnel of my spine
sweet sweat is running:
sound of wind and limb,
young Adam with his riding ribs;
enroute the dancing goatfoot
with predictable cruet
in the printless hall.
I only drank an apple
in this 'fine and private place'.
Run thief run! A thief, I
know the footprints of one,
but have no shoes to spring me.
My bareface clock springs time
in puris naturalibus,
natural as Myron's grown
child with his wildoat discus.
Outdoors a sandy acolyte
is stringing garden lanterns
on that pine dry air,
and God is white light breaking
in my prism breaking.