At the beaten tin table, the evening sky
burning its orange as gulls stitched their cries
across the lacquered sea, you let
your hands rub the chill from my shoulders,
let your lips tug my lips-
wind unbuttoning your shirt
and the years in between our last meeting.

Later we climbed the black, pitted rocks
as wind thrust its way through wheat and the wheat,
emptied and loose, shuddered in place
with all that passes through it.







The Bed

Ten years old or more,
the mattress
now weighs in so many shapes.
Lifted from the bed frame
I push it up against the wall
and watch its weight
give in and sag.
In that small room
there was the curtain's uneven hem,
the nearby sea
and light beams which
washed the sheets in color.
He said it was for me,
the bed, and wrote
small notes along the wooden
planks that held the
mattress firm.
After he had gone, he visited
on rare occasions, and we would sleep
and hardly touch, the bed
in its loyalty still kept us there.
From that time I kept
the worn out slats,
unbleached planks, the frame
without the headboard he always
promised would be made
for me, and now that he lives
in such plush display of
married comfort, I think
of this bed, of the many beds
must have come after it-
What of those first efforts
at design? So crude, they stayed
scratched into the soft wood
we so completely laid ourselves over.







Conversation

I tried to open up the quiet
but the voice that came
was too loud.
I even fell one night
at your feet.
Then the years arrived.

The pages in drawers
unraveled
with all that could never be said-
walks to a lighted shopwindow,
the words
always worse
than the tears,
slammed doors
worse even than the tiny blade
in September.

The dampness
of the rented room
is still a smell
which mixes with the red flame
flickering in the heating grate.
Here is the sex, the love
that came of love,
here I leaned against so much time,
against so many words given-
till we lost them
like so much scattered rice.







After Rains

Today after rains, after snow
green trees sweep past, hills.
Spring soon, the bus driver in front
combs his hair with fingers
which remind me of you, your fingers
in greased black hair, in me, still
there are the pictures, after pain come
the pictures in their own time, even now
when all is blossoming, cats screaming
ecstasy in the deep night, even now
as the fenced trees show their new shoots
they come, pictures of a dead season.







The Last Heat of That Summer

The fine gold chain with the tiny hearts-
its string of hearts bounced on the old mosaic floor
as he grabbed her buttoned shirt.
His wife newly dead, her husband newly married
and in their lovemaking the towel he spread
for the blood she had. He told her he would taste it
if she let him; Human he whispered but she
held his hands to her breast, his mouth to her lips,
night coming on, the collage of pictures, black
and white pressed flowers in the iron frame pressed
against so much time as they, too, tried to press
so much loss into the last heat of that summer.