apples, fall

i saw you flower
in the spring of this
particular year, the
nurturer's air rushing
in as if from bellows and
beneath the tree from
which you hung, the
grass beginning its
rise to the goddess

i stayed away from the
tree, and from you, for
various stretches of
time, although you
spied me most days
when i came

to fetch the children,
who were out in the
back field thundering
in their frolic and unable
to hear the call to supper;

or to water and grain the
horses, who stood
in the pasture blinking
and whinnying at
the heat of the sky
and tumult of the birds;

or to dodge the stout
raindrops and electric
flash of lightning
that commuted the
sky into the refuge of
the wild reapers;

or to kiss my lover's
neck, with my hands on
her hips and her head back
and the sounds of
the summer spilling
into the soil if only
for a moment.

you aged slower
than the days moved
forward, but there
you have it - the sun
and moon are rivals
for your soul as much
as for mine

and i came out
one afternoon to
find that you'd
rounded into green
pearls strung
along the branch;

ornaments suspended,
silent as the flame upon
the wick, you in your
clusters clinging to
those slender arms,

hopeful for the day
that you'd find me
with my eyes adoring
your skin and my
voice high in the
chambers of your host.

but i am too wildly
flung to linger
for long, to be a
worthy engagement
for all of you.

some i did pick,
at random, to consider,
to handle, to polish
in the palms, while
most of you looked on.

and the harvest did
come and you braced
for it, virgin brides
awaiting in your green
cathedral, until the
whole affair was past
and you wept to the
ground on the eve of the
harvest.

i found you this morning
while out for a walk in
search of a matchless
offering of frost-dew on the
blade,

and there you all lie on
a matted bed of leaves
and grass, in concert with
a cold autumnal air that
sucked in as if by
bellows.

your stations now fully
transmuted to something
not lowly, but low, coronated
by crystal beads of dew,
your migration completed
violently indeed.

i'd missed it all,
all of it nearly enough
to no longer fully
know you anymore,
which is my consuming
transgression.

but rather than collect
you all in one terminal act
of hubris, to gather you
into unceremonious buckets
and get you off that bitter
bed that will soon succumb
to winter's enduring
concealment, i left
you to be

and stepped away to
rejoin this calamitous
existence that leads me
more away from myself
than toward, knowing that
i cannot be all things
to all good people,
and therefore almost
required by the fates
to leave you
in your spoiling postures

but stll

please

loved no less by me

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the girl who dreamt of the exploding sun

the girl who dreamt of
the exploding sun
regards her moon
in a temper of mutation
and solitude,
singing about
a day or two not
long ago when
love's lifting wing
left her on a
diver's ledge

a wail to the stars
has caused her temporary
blindness, so she
bleeds from her eyes
until the salt in them
returns in a melancholy
flow down onto her
hands, her lap, the floor
and she is finally
ready to tell
me her dream,
which woke her last night

the sun - she explained -
rose high and stayed
fast when she ventured
outside: this cyclopean
orb hanging above the earth,
the size of immortality
and flaming in
its cradle, the sky,
like an accused child;
bristling and arresting
the air and scattering
all of god's shadows

but then, she said, in
that posture, in a
bloated cast, the
sun broke into a
thousands smaller suns
and tore across the
horizons and into the
orbits of all the stars
and held in their visages
the expression of eve on
the day she first loved adam

i am apt to think
she had dreamt the
dream of the resonant
goddess, who comes to
us in our most unarmed
state, tripping among
our gardens of dim light
and through our crops of
bright darkness and who
murmurs above the
husks of our delirious dreams,
'play, play, play!'

the girl who dreamt
of the exploding sun
is an heir to a pale heart
and a desolate amber moon,
a girl who must ever
be on guard for
the breaking tide
upon a spent shore,
and whose own love
is drowned in
the oaths of riddles

i would tell her this,
then, about her
thousand small suns:
smile up to them
in their fine orbits;
gather their rays
in porcelain palms;
sip them from the cups
of green blades of grass;
leap up and
pluck at them as you would
pluck at the strings of
an alabaster harp

for you know not
when they will
wind down their own
days, pass on from your
threshold and become cold
comets colliding with each other
until they've turned into the
dust of ages,
never to radiate down
upon you again

that is the nature of your
lovers' hearts, then

always

my friend

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my witness moon

my tempest purity,
my witness moon,
you've devoured me
and my pale armor;

plundering me,
my pastoral monarch,
my wild testimony,
rending my sea.

outside my window, on
this day, the harvest
epoch continues with
plaited rains,

lashing the barn
and drenching the
fields while i roam my
hallways to your chime.

flecked with joy
and crowned with
cascades of laughs,
you came

into my arms from
your vigilant mother,
whose seam was torn
and who was recast
anew.

you had no howl in
you, you never really have,
my astral sun,
my quick night.

i see you down a long,
pathless suspension,
your invasion of me complete
at the dawning of  a winter.

your meaning in my life
written with blood ciphers
and locked in a dark room
built with the bones of
my ancestors.

i'm not ever meant
to know why you entered
my dreams with all
your seraph sighs.

there, as in an echoing
chamber, you are the
plucking strings of a guitar
and lilt of a whispering peasant.

you were conceived on
a day such as this: at the
height of the harvest foist,
with her wet tremble,

when my howling passion
overtook your mother's
quietude and plunged her
into the familiar fire.

i will ever be an annotation
to your days, my vibrant
leaf, my avid voyager.

i will be the scent of the brume
of an extinguished candle;
the primal wildflower
perfume on your fingertips.

my memory lately leaks
from my timid fibers and
drains into the soles
of permanent wounds.

but,

my feet will fall
in the rattling hall
among a thousand and one
malnourished guests

before i know why you
were sent to me,

my lovely increase,
my armed medium,
my witness moon.

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