give

i've defaulted on a few loans
lately and the lenders have now closed
their windows to me
for not meeting their terms

perhaps i'm sorry or
just not taken in by the
rate of interest and how it all felt
like an ambush of serpents

i prefer equal terms scribed
within the bright tails of those luminaries
with whom i've shared some
meteoric passing

an exchange of corresponding
light against a contrasting dark
no unparallels
no imbalances in our intensities

you burn for ______ and i burn for _______
expressed in a graduation
of interest and meaning
to step in step, in kind, and deliberately

all my recent lenders are
on a take after all - saying with
full mouths whatever it takes to
convince me of their hunger

does anyone give truly
without the shading
eclipse of want?

does anyone truly want
without feeling the
sweep of guilt's hacking scythe?

i'm a fool in the
service of my heart
and lack the cool
dispassion of ice

that covers the lake
in winter or the
hot hunger
of fire in the wild

unable to believe that what i will
lose from offering my passions
will counterbalance
what i will gain

and that it all
in the end is an
exercise in the
leveling out of truths

and i suppose we
lose, we all
do, in the games
we play with our hearts

no one is the same
and we all fly toward
what we desire with
faults in our wings

but i -
i want my want to
be not answered
with your beckoning palms

but rather with
an open cup
into which i
pour myself

to be consumed
with genuine thirst
and to give equitable
nourishment to a lover

than to be asked
and asked again
and shown vile
disdain

if my cup goes
dry from
the evaporating
powers of your selfishness

as if one can
taste the flavors of
my affections with
a mouth full of bile

let's give and
give; allow to
be given to and
let it be just that

and then - then
i will refill my
cup for you
and for you

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your dry field

i'm a thunder advancing
the edges of your field,
crawling in a scold,
rumbling toward that
squalid acre

where you pitched a
flag to stake a claim
with a tongue that
carries the poison
of asps

yours is a field turned to
scrub, bordered now by bramble;
no more dancing daisies, happy gilia:
all of it burned by
the transgressions of your lips

you summoned this heat
that has dried your
range and drained
the waters underfoot
and now

look at you
pouring vain tears
onto those
deep cracks hoping to
call back the flower

i offer no hope
bringing my torrent
from a gray brow;
these are not tears but
something to whet your ego

to make you thirst
again for my attentions
only to see it all
evaporate when i've
passed you by

that is the way of
the drought: when some expect
the deluge to be a cure when
a month of rain
is the only way back

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we had our forests

we had our forests,
my father and i,
where i witnessed the
sanctity of his gesture
on walks that trimmed
our margin

a hike taken in a place
with precipitating light
and inscribed
with the words of god

what mastery
of yours
did you bring to
that place for me!

my shepherd
in a cathedral of
spruce and pine,
steeplebush and needle

bowing my youth
and making souvenirs
of all the
parables between us

while bending the branch
and tramping
the fallen leaves
decaying underfoot

i witnessed those steps
before me
with the attitude of
the sojourning pilgrim

crossing great
oceans and
weathering great
squalls and
piloting great boats
made of the thinnest of skins

we had our forests,
my father and i,
whether in the hunt
for a tree to ornament
in december

or a vernal brook in august
into which we could
cast and wait
and cast and
wait

i couldn't wait of course -
i tried, i talked
and you listened
and i talked over
your listening

my boy-chatter a
thief of the
melodies of rapt immersion;
an oppressor of
woodsong and woodsilence

you would shush me
and i would watch the
back of your shirt
and ponder your heels
while the broken current
resumed

either way
our moments were
present like suspended
hummingbirds
flitting and filtering
captured by nothing
except opaque memory

a fugitive place,
memory, swallowing
life whole and
regurgitating
the merest ghosts
of it for our sympathy

i have tried congregating
the hacked recollections
of my youth into
something of a meaning

and what is left
is no ghost
no forlorn decay
no rot
no crumble

i see the
lanky birches (your
favorite)
and the brawny oaks
the barbed firs
and the leafy maples

i hear the champ on
the dry underfootings
and the trill on the
branch and a breath
in the canopy

and i especially see him
my father
and how his arms - yes
and how his legs - yes
and how his hands - yes
were my tenders

we had our forests,
my father and i,
like a soft hymn in a
sleepy boy's ear:
a sweet song
sung low
a hum

just a hum

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my serenity

i.

i became vexed
by your capture
and the menace of
your leveling domains

foaming torrents
coalesced
beneath your brow and
exuded an eliding patience

i in my swagger
pranced in a boast,
delighting with
the purples of hubris but -

soon weighted and cowed
by the sway of
your scowling lectures
and fisted ragings

you wore me to the
thinness of a sighing
wafer and in my arms you
unspooled chaos

dispersing from your
coil certain hymns
to a sympathetic
yet minor god

until in a softening
light i hardened into
a pearl of a man
called father

ii.

i make of this life
that no road really
ends and no road really
goes anywhere
but people end
and people go
that a prayer is a possibility
a dream a song
a dishonesty a knife
that life is the prolonging
of an affair with god
that you'll know the meaning
of my life at its
broad dusk
that you'll sit facing
it the way a
cat faces a field
of tall grasses
in late august
toward the anonymity
of all those blades
all those wisps of
loitering blades

iii.

daughter of my daughter
sighted softly

in a vague rain
emerging out of a lurk

a firedancer and
frolicking waif

scuffed toes pouring
light from a genie's cloak

no beholding pride
no forged facade
all wonderment
beneath a cascade
of fragrant life
and yearning flower

a certain belle
beneath a parasol

of an unsculpted mother's
enfolding serenity

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