26 - The Sacrament of Depression

The lull draws down our pious bows

to lie with dying incense, let the cloy

of unwash weigh us low in a droop of undone space.

Heavy with turbid midday’s wine and idle

in thick, a tame god’s granting

foolish prayers to bathe in substance.

Now I am here like air in bread.

Homesick for the whisk of passage

censer swing alighting gusting’s kin.

But all smoke settles, remains.

Was the world ever thin enough for we

who live in going?

This hollow now is some death,

the inert ferment robbing body, blood.

14 - For a Different View

When the sun’s florid hand blots

wrought iron curls in calligraphic shadow

on the net mesh of a window screen,

and its felting of highlit white dust flings out

depthy fields frozen in a snowglobe

moment resisting imperial summer,

time pockets to accommodate this

unseasonable dream:

How I would skate in that

frictionless immunity from

seasons’ melt of perfect surfaces.

13 - Untitled

No, I’m not “fighting it.”

Enough of waged wars.

I’ve slunk into the window

sill gap it’s left unshut

and puffed me up with words,

prising wide the lit space where

I hate the least

to languish.

Watch me blow out wax

paper boats on

drafts to nowhere; pray only

may they run aground

on green green

reefs of uncut grass.

12 - Avian Laze

I lie nested, a moony, rumpled bird,

dreaming up caricatures of flight.

Lax-limbed waiting proves that wings are unlike sails,

demand a casting out to snag their hooks

on the tumbling silk of cloud-marbled sky.

Blue the dispassionate banner of heights

flown by my eyrie — as indifferent toward furled feathers

as blown-away hats and casual mortality —

I should know better the unlikelihood of wind

to net me in the tangle of its sheets,

all a ruffle and rousing of slick pinions

spiriting me high like tented paper.

But I’ve forgotten the flex and crackle

of a sober climb’s full musculature, and

how to measure out the needed

tendon-lengths like strings

for a taut kite:

I’m indolent for the dim and shifting

shadows cast in the caves of my eyes.

10 - Möbius Rain

Hung on the dark underbelly

of the firmament sphere,

I am a laden wet bead,

about to drop.

Even God can’t keep this

micro-ocean from

mingling with

space rivers.

8 - If I Can Make It Here...

Here on the Atlantic coast, lip of the deep cup drunk in migrant faith,
I am on the cusp of seeing Truth:
        The postulant’s scopic skyline embossed upon the blue,
        like layered shadows cast by fresh eyes’ bright dream of it,
        city-solid, life-alight,
        but the ocean bedevils unsteady heels.
I feel the border’s weight from this changing place,
and follow history’s dark reverse, away.

Against the concrete inner curve of dock the water
beats a muddy waste:
        chopped froth upon the rough wall.
        Up rise brown peaks, and peaks
        of damp remains, debris, expelling
        the hushed filth of waves.
The Hudson paints its image on the city’s porous coast,
delivering banished revenants, drowned ghosts.