BE LOST

A poem in six parts:

Dali's Clock

Building on Sand

Monet at Giverney

. . .

Suite Ste. Luce

Though Lovers

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House of Dreams

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1

The clematis unfolds

bruised purple on the porch.

Jazz piano:

beneath the black

and white hammers

of ivory keys,

old wounds crack open.

 

A flight of feathered notes:

this dead heart

sacrificed on the lawn.

 

I wash fresh stains

from my fingers

with the garden hose.

 

2

The evening stretches out

a shadow hand.

I feel my heart

squeezed like an orange

by long, dark fingers.

 

Somewhere,

the whitethroat

trills its guillotine

of vertical notes.

 

I flap my hands in the air.

They float there,

white butterflies,

amputated

in sunlight's

net.

 

3

The light fails

fast, I hold up

shorn stumps

of flowers

for the night

wind to heal.

 

The pale magnolia

bleeds into summer:

white petals

melting on the lawn

like snow.

 

Sparrow sings

an afterlife

built of spring

branches.

 

4

Pressed between

the pages of my dream:

 

a lingering scent;

 

the death of last

year's delphiniums;

 

the tall tree

toppled in the yard;

 

a crab apple flower;

 

a shard of grass

as brittle

as a bitter tongue

at winter's

end.

 

5

A leaf lies down

in a broken

corner

and fills me

with a sudden silence.

 

I revise

our scrimshaw history

carving fresh tales

in the ivory

of new found bones.

 

6

A vixen

hunts for my heart.

 

She digs deep

at midnight

 

unearthing

the dry teeth

you buried

from my borrowed

head.

 

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