Calendars

                                    A poem in chants for four voices:
                                     [Demeter
                                                Chorus
                                                Persephone
                                                            Hades]


                                    In the winding
                                    of the vine
                                    our voices stretch
                                    from us and twine —
           
                                    No, going into the waiting places
                                    is not easy.  Flowers fade there.
           
                                    around the year's
                                    fermented wine —
                       
                                    Mostly, it’s surrender of wanting,
                                    or the fear that a flame will be dampened—
             
                                    or that everything warm will come rushing
                                    over me with reproach—or that endless
           
                                    needles could be ranged in the tunnel—
                                    or that my bare feet would be slippery—
           
                                    Yellow.  Fall roars
                                    down to the ground,
                                    loud, in the leafy sun that pours
                                    liquid through doors.
                                     Yellow, the leaves go down
           
                                     or that once I’m down in that darkness
                                     someone outside will block off the entrance,
           
Touches of gold stipple the branches,
promising weeks of time —

                                                                                        Thread With Me

                                                                        My lover, when you riddle with me—

                                    reddening slowly, then suddenly free,
                                    turned like a key
           
                                    Oh! the falling flowers have caught me
                                    by dipping yellow, purple towards the hunger—
           
                                                                         —the hard, the intricate dark
                                                                          (I hear the notes of your words
                                                                         ring for me cool as the birds,
           
                                                                         my lover—
           
                                     through the long year's
                                     fermenting wine
           
her thin stems turning, held to be—lost—

                                                                         my lover, when you thread with me


                                     Now you are uncurled and cover our eyes
                                     with the edge of winter sky,
                                     leaning over us in icy stars

                                                                         through this night-shot

night-shot dark

is never easy.

                                     Flowers fade here.
           
                                     Voices pull me on through the cavern
                                     from the new season.  Her voice old, silent—
           
                                                                         our hands, our breasts, our curves
                                                                         curl through our hands and ravel—
           
On damp limestone, a violet curling—

                                                                         my lover, when you riddle with me
                                                                         the hard, the intricate dark.


                                    Rack me with courage, spring,
                                     come kill me, flowers;

                                                                         if  we are shadows, come;

make me our shadows

                                     as I reach for flowers.

From Calendars (Tupelo Press, 2003).