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.