Under stars she moves liquid as a black wave
The turn of her gaze
Set the cosmos spinning.
I held her hair like water in my palms.
A kiss from a gypsy
Wild as mountain laurel.
Behold this falling veil upon the ragged hills:
With fingers lithe and lissome
She welcomes the night.
I used to write pretentiously.
In metred verse and poetry
And rapturous prose,
Commit these lines to memory:
The Father, the Son, and the Holy
Ghost. In haunted fields
I watched the white mist rise
Round rusted crooked fenceposts.
Now I stand long hours behind glass walls,
Watching trains glide toward unknown cities.
Trim and fast and pushing northward,
Or heavy boxcars ribbed with snow
Trundle slow as treacle along the steaming ties.
Oh how the world still turns
Despite our desperate lies.
On a sidewalk deep downtown
The cigarette haze of dirty jazz,
The impatient impetus of people moving fast
Stamping out the cold with bullet-hole boots.
Fluorescent caverns swallow up the stars.
Her beautiful midnight headdress
Forever stained yellow with artificial light.
Let me go down to the sea,
Or count the planks of a rotting pier
Beneath the winter’s shimmering bodies:
Orion’s belt; Polaris–the Lodestar,
Points of navigation withstood the test of time.
I sat down at the water’s edge
And with my feet soaked in the frozen drink
I watched the tides disappear into the east.
