melody of unfolding summer happy
rosebud, at heart center
scent of frankincense, myrrh,
the sandalwood in a golden box

carried by three men
following a wanting star:

who is afraid to say the word,
so loud and so clear:

i am drunk on the fragrance
in the heart center of the
unfolding petals, 7th center,

the way the world floats
about like clay, waiting
to become
a masterpiece.

there is music that breaks silence.
there is water bounding and resounding
from the deep heart of the mountain.

who says one can’t sleep at the feet
of the god, who doesn’t, and wouldn’t he want to?
let go-

you run heavy, water

blossoms, little parachutes
expand with the wanting,
breathe

these love letters
little fingerprints

float in air-

if you believe the buddha cut her hair
to give up the world,

field and fields of flowers become wild
indignant examples:

change the architecture.
choose love.

and this is how we float:

suspended, balancing on wire,
as if we were underwater, speaking
under all of this water,

two disappearing brushstokes,
holding the posture,
as if we were captured, in confrontation
with everything that would ever be
and will be: being.

tell me, what it’s like to be
the swarthy stone,

the singing relentless earth bounding
beneath the sculptor’s hand-

tell me wilderness, will you answer
to a name?

tell me,
what would it be like
to be a masterpiece?

(draft 1-on being the stone before the gaze of michaelangelo)

barefoot, i would be, fragrance
the root. traveling up the spine

in folded knee pose. at the farm desk:
the harvest laid out, oh but what is this

overflow, i gather here, and spread across
gravity fits his footsteps
into mine, and waits

breath, this night sea

where everything is possible.

the hands of cool winds brush through
the crown of my hair,

some kind of glory in it:
hearing night-birds sing
slow moving
slow dancing

you.

the quietest, little

shell opens,

your hands, little suns.

the happiest words written
sometimes come in a time of war.

imagination, a coin, when flipped,

fierce monster vs. flower eating being,

but because of the darkness, you think

the worst. you think: darkness is

a ghost reciting all of your unfulfilled
promises, harsh words that can’t be called back,

written somewhere in the darkness
crowding this room, at sundown.

the only thing you can see
is fragrant. smells like caskets of flowers,

smells like effervescent, illuminating,
is this what closing the all the bodily gates means?

bloom.

a child’s daisy chain, a paper and glue
mobile of wanting; desire, to wish for
and unrepeating and undying love:

can tear you limb from limb
and make you transparent,

a drop of dew,

oh i adore, and water so deep.

it wasn’t what imagining could do
that made her resurface

like a magician’s charm, long overdue
to be discovered, unlike orpheus’s story

that i wrote about above, wanted to match
his story to mine, in code words

you see, when spring runs through your veins
like a deer running for her mate.

everything blooms. pushes up from the earth
bound for anti-establishment, anti-what you
are supposed to do, anti-just bring me back home.

the difference between wanting and love
perhaps, is what you give.

draft 1 on the photo of the goddess held by a chain above water

and eyes fluttered with white dew,
generous

this winter in abundant things
when the word appears everywhere
magic

how could you not turn january into
a stage of props and harmonies
somewhat like a galaxy

nebulous, sleepy

unravelling quilt made by the storybook
we read millons of times
when we were younger.

how about the sparkle inside of a galaxy?

ah yes, you

makes radiant the you
standing in the field
even though winter

ablaze with wildflowers
you have drawn
on the graphite

storybook pages
of this is your life,

now lit up and neon,
now with the heart,
a red carnation
placed in the lapel

of this life:

can we just look upon it
like the red flower
painted up the wrists
of the field,

drowzy with the composition

of a woman in standing
still, so dazzled
by the nesting swarm,
just evening-

how you must change your life
when it is already perfect,
how you must run for it-

like the wolf howling
inside winter’s wind.

can’t we just say,
your life is a snowstorm of brilliant light,
flocking beautiful shadows across the page
just like the publication
of this poem

-the last days of disco 2011

what the wind said, when you
spoke.

hours and days are nothing
once the book is finished.

but yet, the story

still continues:

as if the author of this
was somehow writing
us:

in black lines on a page:

across rivers, and fields, and
indigo water-colored seas-

the way maps are drawn
of an old world

the swirl of blackbirds at sunset.

inside my pocket, the moon.

the crease on your coat, the crease of your face against, snow-laden trees, and
this morning song, melting petals across a landscape, painted with little figures
bundled up against the cold.

there was a bridge of magical leaves, leading to the doorway of the house
where all the lights were lit.

we lit a fire against the darkness.
the river bounded and resounded
outside the windows.

tides we could not hold back.

the alchemy of hands made spirits we have yet to name.

i told you the story of the tree i sat beneath, with one finger raised,
to hold back time.

and wore a red cape, the color of the heart,
to put a blush of light into the landscape.

so you could reach out for me
if you want to.

-an ode to vermont in first draft, so many years later