("This leaf had eyes...")

FIVE POEMS

Weeklight

the days, years, landlight . . .

spears clatter in the streets

arc-lights, sunlights aim for me,

inbetween, bars! black a block long.

It's me inside

pawing for corners, I pivot to escape

run through shadow

or through light, it's me

who cannot celebrate a green.

My eyelids, lifting glaciers,

I circle by rote :my eyes are obsolete

sleep too

is painful, my wrists

lashed to the time, "Will any

of these streets return?"

There are no birds, no actual sun.

Only an inventory, a pattern of daylight

:exactly every so many hours or so

a stanchion nears a wave of shade :the cage

it's me

sentenced to know by heart how

the hourly habit of Earth

is copied on this street, this wintered city

shed from color

to survive the landlight

survive the woodland reaching for the sea.

*

With one hand, the world :Atlas

needed both

needed help :a lift

against that part of Earth

where air is thick enough to hold a man

:airborne

:Clymene

let loose your son

don't listen to your free hand:

it says, "Don't fly beyond the flats."

Woman,

push! lift off your son. Face him

against the wind.

Underneath your loving hand

he sings,

his feet and hands in place.

+

Your breasts, little sister

are drinking my perfume, are lips

tasting steam, are clouds.

Do you know, little sister,

How much an ocean weighs

when I sing from its peak?

Little sister, in your tiny breasts

are ships, are winds, are anchors

soft and fine as silk :skies

that only sailors really see.

*

Across the Urals, fierce plains of Asia :here

are trees worth watching, see

the sky is sulking- Where is the snow!

It's snowing now and our room

is rising in the east, looking for leaves

a million leaves are watching now. I

I'm still counting walls.

The snow of China hammers now, see!

We've returned to wood

hide in the barks of flowers

each of us, alone! are trees worth watching

as we boil in the shade

in the snow.

*

This leaf had eyes, heard

its tree put down a root, saw

how cold can granulate

:death

a snow, a loss

as painless to the tree

or is it my skin awake

my skin gnawing on the shade? am I

the only kid who ate the cold bark raw?

chere

a street tree clusters in my hand.

I touch each leaf alive

hugging the oak, the elm

heating the air with my heart.