MINDING THE FOOL

 

Noting the hours named for smoldering,

for Lilith, for stirrings and whispers,

for a scant blue passage of planets,

the strange distance of the sky, like yours,

far away, among those cut-off from the world,

slips half-dressed from night's black lake

with only tresses and lace to hide a shiver.

 

Your eye will consume or spare a jack-lit soul

like mine, the fuming bones restored by song.

 

On the cool of marble floors and shadows

roll soft hollow echoes of water and pearl,

or dry feather and petal scattered by breath,

the spirit of a sleepless composition

gradually changing from solids into smoke.

 

And you will come another morning
fluting your continuous music, elevator

rising above the prose of crowded  spaces.

I will chase an endless poem, hopeless,
founded on a personal flaw,

complete with joy as accidental as dozing off,
or stumbling with my nature out of place.

 

Breaking in on you in desert synthesis

of fire and water, cactus fruit that opens

like a flower waking in a mirror, cooing

ripple-soft with naked speech, I peer

through cracks and crannies of a hidden

soul with orange vacuum tube eyes,

a true self still burning old and bright.

 

Minding the fool, I flatter myself with good art and bad,

mistaking a burger babe in delicious distance,

returning love from the prow of a yacht,

acknowledge constellations lost like rusted wagons,

pull toys and dust, and run my fingers over missing keys.

 

The flower nearly rising, always trying

to raise her futuristic phrases to my ear,

is like your distant syllables of love,

a gradual song I am desperate to hear.