after The Afternoon Sun by C. P. Cavafy

This room, how well I know it.

This room, my tree-house, my nest
made of the breath of books,
sweat from watercolors,
in the shadow of branches
cast across 240 sunrises

now rented, packed up,
folded and tucked
in boxes, the sunrise still
seeps out.

This house, a double memory.

It is familiar like, photographs of daffodils are,
two years ago and still, I call you my little lantern
of the sun.

The way I loved you
simple, not indifferent,
lost with difficulty,
but still reborn
as something hopeful.

Mirror: list to me all of my favorite things.

Memory: things I wish to erase but still
they are the dark spaces who lift
their angry arms with the desire to dash out,
sunny spaces.

We moved the couch beneath the window.
We lit and burned wood in the fireplace when it was cold.

You on your knees with no ring then,
and still not now, would I say yes.

We left the couch there, for the new family
to move in upon.

Sundays, apple pancakes, poems written
across the backs of what we wouldn’t save,
what I wouldn’t ask for tomorrow,
regret nothing.

These things must be left somewhere.

At some vantage point, things discarded become beautiful.
Make you what you are.

We made love so many times.

These sad things must still be somewhere.

But then, the moonrise, and I lift my head
to look at my hand, to look at the pathway
left by the apple tree upon my fingers,
and straighten the leg perpendicular to earth,
to bear witness to everything I have been
and will ever be.

Next to the window was the bed;
the afternoon sun spread across halfway.

I haven’t forgotten the naming of things
in the mellow soft bloom
of a double memory,
spring who springs out
regardless of the memory
of what isn’t to happen,
just yet.

Wish for it. Sit still beneath the boughs
of the tree you read about, in books,
mapped out and eulogized in the east.

Let it fill with rain, then snow, water talk,
rivers flow into other rivers with names like
life-blood of god, endless curls of the beloved,
sappy spring rising through branches,
just like water makes pathways through earth,
it should make the body flower with eventual bloom.

You become the tree.
40 days of no fruit.
No color: as from the world
the most incredible saffron sunlight pours
from an a sky so blue you could eat.
But do not touch this. Do not reach out for it.

The beloved tempts you, serenades you with adagios
written for saints. The primal word sets traps for you
as notes from a flute. But do not listen.

Enjoyable figs, juice from the mango,
ruby pomegranite seeds sparkle before you.

You hunger for it but remain still.

Who is she who raises her arms,
thumbs folded over two fingers in mudra,
lightning language of the body sifting through mind,
repeating the mantra at the forehead
so that the heart burst open?

So it could catch fire, and wake all those who sleep
beneath sleeping trees in a forest where
no one knows the answer to the koan
of the sound of a tree falling
where no one is listening.

Remain in posture, breathe, repeat the mantra.
Let it vibrate the point
between the eyebrows.

Earth as my witness, the world went white.

Held back a thousand arrows,
a thousand earthquakes,
a thousand tidal waves,
by the finger of the woman
sitting beneath the tree
resting on earth.

Time and time again, I try to come to you.

But the earth holds on to me here.
I remain still, floating still
in the honey bees wet ink.

draft 1

So much like the bending bare branches
of the tree, early January,
it’s hard to hide much
in winter.

In secret, someone writes my name
in black ink, over and over again,
and runs it beneath water.

I am born, and fade. It goes on like this.
This liturgy of the hours.

I left my journal in someone else’s bed
with drawings of trees, quotes I wanted
to remember come New Year’s.

It’s not in how much I have loved
but more in the way I am loved.

I wake every morning.
I shiver and shake
like a sapling tree
in love with the wind.

I have nothing to protect me against
the way in which he moves me.
I can’t control the way the earth
moves through season,
the way the sap diminishes me,
makes me witness, the way I can
love like this, the way I cannot touch
him, the way he touches me,
except the flowering
inside me
come spring.

Snow hit like a wind chime.
Wildness building a nest
in soprano tones, this arctic
woven from the silk of kimonos,
the father of the crane,
bearing red fruit
in his beak for his young.

The way i can’t sleep anymore.
The night whispers to me
fledgling songs:

for the first time
my wish, to stay.

Who needs to be big and strong
to make this flight across the universe?

I’ve grown feathers.
They’ve already made me wild.
My wish, for rest.

The arc of ice frozen branches
in the white moss forest,
cradles where once
I was afraid to walk in the dark
of the winter snows.

It’s now in the knowing.
There’s a seedling hidden
in the mouths
of the winter slumber
of tree animals.

There’s an opening in the fields and flowers,
and here I am standing in the center of it.

In the act of gathering,
the verb becomes the fruit.

Leaned against a white wall
along with ink drawings of a sparrows with white chests,
red birds singing into their mouths,
the dream of black words written across it,
formatted as a love poem.

If I were brave and strong,
I’d gather branches
knit them together, weave and tie,
fold and crease, merge things
who seem to oppose in force,
understanding the laws of attraction,
the way the sun chases the moon,
the way everything moves in slow motion
when I draw two in the picture.

I look it up to try to define it:
noun into verb, the fruit of the gaze,
becomes vibrant, celebrated,
written about, and studied
in the silence of quiet rooms.

If I were to build a love nest,
it would have the sound seashells make
when pressed against your ear.
The way the rain falls so close.

I would not whisper the sound
branches make when they sway
and sweetly fall across air.

I would not whisper the sound
of guitar strings across
your fingertips.

So quiet, they are,
and full of song.

draft 1

the falling of salt
into tides, and ink dark,
we are sun inside,
a black canvas,
printed with white diving doves:
the pressure of evening,
this window glow,
why am i always outside
looking in, orchids
inside of glass houses,
i’m nothing without
the defining gaze,
sends me into a whirlwind
of hats and umbrellas,
birds who protect their young.

put the needle on the record,
loop churchbells,
loop daytime, loop
you and i walking
like ghosts shoulder to shoulder
in falling rain.

i’m always outside looking in.

imagining what it would be like
to be the sun.

wake me every morning, just like this
river water blooms across my doorstep

and those, little fingerprints of rain,
come across my window,
like this.

just rest your hands
here, like this.

those woodlands, grasslands, mountain lands,
orchards, canyons, your body, flowered fruit
of memory, what hasn’t happened yet

i remember, like a dog chasing
after it’s tail.

this morning runs like water from me,
these words must be specks of rain.

i remember what isn’t to happen,
what already happened, yet.

they tell me poems told to the master
cannot be refused on a day like this.

don’t refuse me now, dear heart,
this song of the nesting birds.

It wasn’t that I had forgotten you. I just went on living.

I live in silence. I remember when it was.
How the world moved slow, magnetic.

Still, passing overhead, things you imagined to be the world,
are you. How the branches of the pipal tree bow close to one another.

How the river wipes the brow of the riverbed.

The sky opens the door, and rain falls through.

The monsoon’s wet hands move over the strings of a sitar.

How fire warms the air around it.

How devoted these small things are.

Silken robes spin you through the cosmos as if they were you.

Whatever you look for, you are.

I call to it. It answers. There is no end to this call and answer.

Only that which is inside the small seed
will understand the love earth had for it as a tree.

It is only the magnetic field who understands nothing
but the will to make things grow.

first draft, on the eve of Rumi’s 800th birthday

Directions on how to build a nest.

Allow your mind to stream
into the imaginary threads
a bird would use to build a home.

It’s not necessary to love what you find.
But more often useful to collect
things that are warm. Sturdy enough
to hold things of value.

Don’t be shy about sharing
what is most important to you.

Collect what draws meaning.

Was it late afternoon, that first kiss?
And the strands of his dark hair
fell around you?

Breath, could we capture breath
too?

Fortunes who fortold you, river water
captured inside of tubes.

Bread, for the hungry sparrows.
Water for the thirsty trees.
Blood from sandalwood beads,
in the beak of a holy bird,

weren’t those colorful ribbons I used
to weave a scarf for you,
those afternoons drawn in perfect light.

The tempting wooden bowl filled with gala apples,
pressure from being bound like a lotus,
air from the mountains, oh how I was in love
with the very air that moved you.

Paint from the brushes who wash
color into the robes of morning as it
lays across the wheat fields, you and I
disappear into, monsoon rain runs crimson,
pressure of words inside of me,
the expanding diaphram,
that makes the graphite heart,
bloom;

Yes, it is neon, when you talk about
small things that you love.

I imagine we will hang branches all across it.
We will suspend them with invisible wires.

We will photograph it. Write letters home
about it. We will be proud of it. And nudge
gently our winged ones out into the wild world.

And wilder ourselves, we will be, wild birds,
nesting in the wilderness of what it is to be wild.

What is it, most importantly, that makes you
like a thousand wild red birds who dash and dive
close to it, and closer still, there is nothing to be afraid of,
home.

draft 1

Enter the secret field with its hidden animals.
The lute song of the fields, late summer

in love what it is: not destined
for more greatness than this.

Despair is nothing
but overgrown peach blossoms,
nectar so sweet,
you wear it like a crown.

This falling in love happens fast I know.

I didn’t come here for less than this
crown of glory, would I be you
the mountains and the rivers.

It rises over me;
trident of wild geese, trident of river water,
come home again.

The still one in the temple stays still,
clouds pass with rain, then no rain,
the world offers fire flowers,
music boxes filled with wings,
and how could I miss

laying in these tall grasses,
reading the secrets inside
the slow passing gaze of wind.

Tell me, when is it, when will you come?

woodstock, late august
draft 1