You are the Heartbeat and I am the Heart

You are the Song and I am the Singer

You are the Poem and I am the Poet

Eurydice In Hell

no ticket at the gate

no ferryman to
take you out
or bring you in

a small bird settles
on a leafless branch
it sings–no sound
on earth can bring
him back

the poems were only poems

he never read

the moon
was just
a moon
it came
and went

love was just an empty cup
blue flowers and a graceful stem

The Ibis

I take you
back a
thousand
times a day

and let you
go because
it is my way

all your red
is just an
artifact of blue

what I really love is death

you weren’t
real because
you weren’t him

small gods are not the ones to love

and so I cast
my lyre into the
sea and tuck
my head beneath
my wing–a bird
standing on one leg
I wait beneath a paper tree
for death to comfort me

Postmortem

all hair
and teeth
and bone

she is the
rhythm in
this poem

her days
are numbered

she stops
to slow
them down

the old cowpath
the barrels
the apple tree
the gray porch

her father
coming home
carrying
his bones

the men on
the loading dock
calling her name

this is what she remembers

a young girl’s life

danger everywhere

Mining On The Moon

On fire in
the afternoon,
a woman
in a shroud
is cleaning
her own skull
of its flesh;
she has
dug herself
up and is
burning in
the bright
daylight.

Polished bone
is mirroring
back what is
left of her face.
Holes are
everywhere–
eyes,
ears,
mouth–
no one has
heard her voice
for years.

Buried,
disinterred
and buried
again;
now, she
can speak
of return–
silence,
smoke,
intimidation,
incineration,
tapping bone,
bird song,
hard stone,
conflagration–
and of the
day he came
carring a
small lyre.

Waiting For Orpheus

I waited for someone
who never came–
a woman in black
sitting beneath a paper tree

I saw an old man and his wife
the woman was bent like a harp
he had played her for years
black notes falling from her spine
a song sung over and over until
she disappeared inside her bones

this is the price of love
the fine white powder
of her back scattering
with the white blossoms
falling from the trees
the sap of his bitterness
sealing her fate

this is the garden where I remember my life

blue flowers on a red blouse
the sweet smiles of lost friends
the geometry of an old woman’s back
white cherry blossoms and a stone bench
a little girl who could not be loved
a woman who could not stop loving

the poem in my heart
has no words–it waits
for them like I wait
for you in a Kyoto garden
beneath a painted moon

Kithara

inside this lonely
landscape
of painted moons
and paper trees

I’m grateful
for the friendship
you’ve given me

you are a god
and I’m kithara

you play me
and I sing

a year ago
we met
or didn’t meet
beside a blossoming cherry tree

you turned your head and looked at me

and I saw everything I couldn’t be

but what I am is more than you can bear
the face of love
the face of death
a song without a singer
a wing without a bird
a poem written in the sand

we love
a different way than most
I let you go
you keep me close
we speak and never speak
we touch and never meet

who will ever love you quite like this

my gift to you is me
and that is all I’ll ever be

Eurydice’s Complaint

I ask for gray;
he gives me blue.
I ask for light;
he gives me night.

A willful god,
my god he is;
this god
who all the gods resist.

I write him poems;
he writes me songs.
I am his lyre;
he does me wrong.

I cannot stop
this love I feel
it turns my heart into a wheel.

I turn and turn
and only see
that turning brings me
back to me.

What kind of love
is this that stings
and brings me
to this narrow road?

We climb and climb
and never see
an ending to this misery.

He looks ahead
and I am found.
He looks behind
and I am gone.

We are a paradox
this man and me–
a story,
a myth,
a mystery.