Category: ’12

By way of the northern sky (edit 1)

In the light that enters morning
by way of the northern sky,
a Swede encloses a Finn in his arms,
absorbing her darkness,
softening with his smooth brow
the recurve tension of her lips,
ignoring that she took him for herself
before ever he took her as his own. 

Unbalanced in their sufferance,
they spun out music, children and,
in some of us, dance.
They echoed with the sound of you
before ever you came
gliding in passerine suppleness,
music under your wings, landing
with a husshhhh,
with a flutter, like a passing dove.

The keris of lion love (edit 1)

The lions of my heart, including me,
have a core of honest creativity
around which spiral all the moments
of their being.
Between the core and outward-moving
is a luminescent space called love.
If you find yourself in that place,
thank your stars.
It may be scary, full of strong energy,
but you’ll never find anything else like it.

What if I met another lion,
and the spirals of our moments
intertwined like DNA?
What kind of love would we make?
My love has always fared best in outer space,
which cools the nuclear heat of love in me.
What if I met another spiral galaxy,
and gravitation pulled us into one?
All I can think is holy fuck.

The purpose of that lion space of love
is to mediate the moments of our lives,
to help the ones we’re drawn to
find the core of us.
What if I met another lion, and
the space of love in each of us,
in equal brilliance canceling the other,
let us see each other’s cores
with no intervening light,
and the space and light of love became a passage,
love became a cushion, a poem,
love became a feather in the wind?

Oh, to dance around the center
of another honest lion,
and watch him dance around the core of me.
Holy fuck,
what an amazing thing that would be.

Blue eyes (edit 1)

Rain-streaked bricks,
pepper-green trees,
and the sky —
thick as oatmeal, and gray as a city cat —
welcome a procession of
Nanas, walking slow,
humming descants,
dressed in wraps of blue —
turquoise, aquamarine, and harbor —
stirring up the storm.

Their hands set bells
and nazar boncuğu to work, spinning,
facing down anyone who dares
to try poisoning my well.

They take rest, and sip
at sweetened tea. The morning grows old.
As the Nanas leave,
they lift the end of my shawl
into the wind.
Its gauze is cool, fragrant with indigo
from shadows
of past summer suns,
and scattered over with soft diamonds
smiling at blue eyes
winking in the rain
under an ash-wood bough.

Blue eyes

Copper-hued bricks, pepper-green trees,
a sky as thick as boiled oatmeal
and gray as a city cat, and rain, these
are this season’s prelude to the coming
of three grandmothers, each wrapped in a blue:
turquoise, aquamarine and harbor.

Waving their hands to stir up the breeze
that sets bells and nazar boncuğu spinning,
they give these instructions: stare down
anyone who hungers to poison a well.

Retreating, my ladies bless a shawl,
a dupatta sharply redolent of the indigo
shadows it cast under past summers’ suns,
one that’s soft, cool and sprinkled with stars
that smile at the sight of blue eyes
hanging from an ash-wood bough.