scintillating in an un-submerged eye

Was it Ichabod's head
on its ear in the mud
mouth framing
a half-watered exhortation
to the horseman in the Moon?

saturday night

i roam the familiar avoiding those i should love
like i wandered through alleys in foreign cities
beyond the understanding of others i chose not to visit
in search of cloudy horizons burning with brilliance

i walk the winds of november
a few stubborn leaves still cling to ink branches
alleys that smell of last night's beer
corners reeking of urine

others dine together in restaurants along front street
where with clear plastic sheets they've cast out the weather
replaced it with music from women--
up and coming musicians or someone well known

cup of espresso gone cold in my hand
i find a sheltered moment of sun
it's caught on a wall of old brick without windows
casting a light from some other country

traffic noise pauses
the roar of distant surf
falls around corners of buildings
along paths i'm unable to follow

lingering light dwindles
i am left with the diminishing sound my of own footsteps 
wondering if they bear even a single genuine thing

departing the city

red leaves of maple
trodden into wet sidewalks

by the impatience of others
retired from gathering winds

stray traces of white
settle on concrete and vanish

i start down back streets
emptied of restaurant music

walk them over and over
again and again until

i can't bear what they want
they can't give what i seek

i'm off towards clouds
toppling over western hills

where dark winds devour all
the sun had to give

furled

mast-stays sing
I remember a woman from Amsterdam
though not her name

the six-inch scar across her cheek
the left corner of her mouth
but not her name

her face like sun on calm ocean
the white scar   a thin straight wave
she had taken in   a solitary grace

her soft voice never told of the knife I imagined
only asked if I liked the swimsuit she was buying
she was already dreaming of sailing

and I was already with her
forever
 

found

after many years
alone in the woods
elation
brick
shame
lost rivers
a freeway
murmuration
dusk

after many years

a house missing one wall
crumbles into a banana grove
earth-red among burgeoning growth
the white linens of childhood still on a bed
as if the whole world were only a bedroom closet

alone in the woods

eleven grackles in a quaking aspen in the sun
saw-toothed yellow leaves still cling rattling in the wind
the grackles chatter high above the browning bracken
all things grown from earth now returning to earth
damp with thawed frost the decomposing grass
red berries bountiful on still-green holly

elation

alone in the jack-pines
far behind the hills
a man sits naked in a pond

a woman in black pours water
from a bowl upon his head 
it trickles through his long white beard

ripples radiate across the sky
a fading smear of peach
stars begin to fall

they're not what we suppose
but burning coals of bluish ice
the size of fists

they smolder in the pond
but pierce the ground
like bullets cutting through un-fired clay

crows fly out from smoking holes
kirtland warblers
wrens

on the edges of their wings--
fire

brick

a brick has borne a wall
so long that weight has been forgotten
like I have forgotten
the presence of so many people
who have not noticed
a bricked-in archway

I wonder how many times I have passed
through doorways un-filled with brick
how many I still must pass
and that's the thing--

most don't realize
all the doorways they shall never enter
numbering in the billions
nor do they know
which doorways they entered for the very last time
how could they

shame

I have broken the sacred bone
spilled the bloodied wine

turned the yellowed page
crumbled the fallen word
stained the dark frock

I have pounded on piano keys
and knocked the porcelain Joseph off

lost rivers

a fresh-painted wall
filled with photographs strangers have taken of places unlabeled--

black and white rivers
framed waters arrested behind glass that has cracked 

visions of unknown eras
redeemed from others' garages unpacked from lost boxes discovered in attics abandoned

silent rivers cutting through forests of deciduous trees
leaves returned long ago to soil carried away by currents forgotten

a freeway

divides
  shadowed farmhouse from red setting sun

parts that which was sold--
  hay-fields where house-trailers for migrants now rust
  creek-beds and knolls foraged for mushrooms

it severs
  the oiled dirt road still traveled in dreams
  the sand-blow where a lone tree towered--
  the maple I climbed as a boy
  to name with a jack-knife
  my first true love

murmuration

see how a thousand starlings rise--
a vast amebic cloud
above the building's broken silhouette

how a soldier stoops across a purple sky
to take a pack of cigarettes
from a dead man in the mall

see how a single ember circles darkness
scribes its empty orbit through the black