"Ulterior avenues, I will not take you."
More Perihelion:
BobSward's Writer's Friendship Series
A quick list to poets featured in this issue:
Old Story
First the telephone went,
It was cold,
Like addictions condoned
leaves waiting
That narrow bed, a cross
saying, While I was alive
then
the electricity.
and they both went to sleep
as though dressed for a journey.
from above evening
fell, lost
to come back as leaves--
the long snowy divorce. . .
between an altar
and an operating table. Voice
I loved you.
And I love you now.
_______________________________________________________________ Reunion
Snow over the scarred fields just ending, between clouds
In the end the price of understanding
does this mean
Snow over
the scarred fields
should I father a fatherless child. _______________________________________________________________ To John Wieners: Elegy & Response
The street outside
Says crocuses
Says six o'clock and a billion black birds
And have you looked at the paper today
Medical research discloses
Ulterior avenues, I will not take you
Supernaturally articulate pencil, where the heaven
Beginning summer now, incredibly close
Appalling and incomprehensible mercy--
The seeing see only this world.
_______________________________________________________________ Domesticity
Gray little clumps weightless as hair dust what is it
Forty years later
that is, were we to meet-- _______________________________________________________________ Auto-Lullaby
Think of a sheep
Think of your cat
Think of a bird
Think of a big pink horse
If you feel thirsty, then _______________________________________________________________
a candle in a horse skull
moon
at dawn--
My sin is always before me.
everything will be, of
its communication
to those who stand around you,
the complete and absolute
impossibility,
but
I won't remember
Earth? Perhaps
it does, but
I don't know.
Soon I will find out.
just ending,
what lies
before me is my past.
That is,
the window says
I don't miss you, and I don't wish you well
coaxed out of hiding
and killed in the snow
wheeling, and the dusk stars
wait, and the avalanche waits--
that everyone is going to die
of something
of lost objects are you
clouds like an illustration
that disturbed you as a child
utterly unrecognizable
save for our eyes
knitting a sweater;
think of your life
getting better & better.
asleep in a tree;
think of that spot
where you once skinned your knee.
which stands in your palm;
try to remember
the 21st Psalm.
galloping south;
think of a fly, and
close your mouth.
drink from your cup.
The birds will keep singing
until they wake up.