cresting the hill

each vista gives to sinking

into a crease

a green valley 

beneath the cirrus 

and the blue of ages

each cut investigates

the depth of 

substance, leafs 

of ancient letters

under plain highways

through the midwest,

your vibrant eyes

and raised cheeks don't

betray that 

i know you best 

when i feel the bones

in your hands

like the vine sees the light
through coiling grasp

like the child makes up
other rooms of meaning

in the glass of water
shaped for thirsting

is the latent quench
when i tilt the glass

i see true beauty
when articles
become empty

of ideas, of metaphor
and anything but
sound. when i

read each iamb
and its sound pulses
through my temples

is not unlike how
i forget all ideas
when we walk along

and my mind rests in the
moment, as each step
surely presses ground

and blood pulses
through our hands,
becoming felt song

when sky is empty
above us, only air
and we are with nowhere

and the bareness of
meaning, pure lore
is breathing in beauty, truly.

in the golden light of ponds
glide a pair of teethed swans
terrible in graceful white
gods above a liquid aether
slicing through reflected light

water lilies' roots hang down
like an unseen fibrous crown
grasping what is real beneath, their
hands of beauty and of sleight
steady as a mystic tether

i cannot deny two worlds;
surface ripples are a dirge
for a mayfly meeting night
or a tadpole in rebirth, her
forming eyes sense golden light

andy said her fingers knitted
flower coronation
for her hair
at the park as his song
pulled at the hudson's water

like the fingers pulling thread
for clothing her grandchildren
in a quilt, patterned after
a midwestern love
the earth raked and laden.

both are strong and bittersweet,
the violence of a howitzer
in the distance now
rattling windows in their frame
deeper than foundations.

while brooklyn falls for easy girls
flood gentrification
the moma yearns for
the upper room of kansas,
grain silos with her kernel

truthful wheat, unadorned
like strong hands plucking strings
spaced like the rows
and wrought bones of the house
where she sleeps on the plain.

eyelid

me
ta
mor
pho
sis
is
com
pres
sion
of
sec
onds
in
to

marble

be
neath
the
eg
o
lay
er
words
weigh
down
on
i
deal

days

my indecision is rooted in
a dusty window in the basement of
the house on richard's lake road

where dust made the pane
each side a separate cosmos
and in between, incarnation

the residue of life clinging to lucidity
letting light pass through
its fossil poetry

making true discarded pots
and a leather bag
as the greens and flowers outside

beneath the sun sill factual concrete
framing the common descent
of each speck into thoughts

truth of beauty in the unknown
grows in me like  an orchid
inside the goldenrod light