The Pack, and: Faces, and: Partial Rose, and: Sieve, and: Forecast

The Pack

Short the way, but pitiless
The need to walk it.

–Alkman

There is no stream; there is no end in sight.
The lonely mountain path winds on and on.
Breath catches in the lungs like fine ground glass;
The solemn climber gulps it down like wine.
Still, his head is light, his muscles burn.
The pack he carries drags his body down.

Departure was clear morning, dawn itself.
A human frankness about the look of things.
At least that's what he'd thought, companions round,
Drinking coffee, making ready in first light.
The pack he carried then was like a sail;
The mountains, seas at rest, more merciful.

In another poem perhaps there'd be a stream.
Perhaps a little clearing in a wood:
The climber casts his burdens to the ground
And bathes his feet in the waters of the stream.
He rests a long time there under the leaves,
And going on again, he travels light.

In another poem perhaps, but in this one
There is no stream; the path winds on and on.
And the climber doesn't know just why he climbs
Or why he cannot take the path back down.
He doesn't know what happened to those friends
Or the human frankness in the look of things.

He knows the teeth of winds, the rocks below,
The solid purchase, hard-won by his feet.
He knows at some point each one climbs alone
And that there must be others up ahead.
He knows the pack is added to each mile.
He knows no prayer to brake or break a fall.

Faces

She would have sworn summer was the season
    That she loved,
Its lambent light, the length of days in which
    She could fold two
In every one, so that each morning's page
    Or thought would seem
To her, by evening, yesterday's. Sure,
    She'd have qualified –
She hated storms; how suddenly wind could come
    And fell one of two
Loved window-trees, so that where once had been
    A choir of green,
The intimate companions of her days'
    Slow labor,
Now there was only empty sky – blank white,
    Blank blue, blank gray –
And down below, for weeks, that awful stump.

Still, sun-drunk and dazzled by blue sky,
    By the sheer gift of
The illusion of time and time to spare,
    She'd soon forget
The gripe of fear-gripped bowels, storm-shattered nerves,

And that's when she would swear that summer was
    The season of her soul's
Expanding. But she knew what summer was,
    Or else
She learned, when new resolves, new friends, fresh hopes,
    New loves had come
Sudden as bloom or summer storm and left
    Before the leaves
Had donned their death masks.

Partial Rose

We've forced the bud
bruised the petals
no rose shall ever listen here
its choir of mouths cry open
to bless us or accuse
we chose another life
the palest flowers
ash, snow, the un
cut hair of graves

Sieve

Light
    in autumn
that stand
    of trees
in leaf
    blossom
bare, flare
    Of bone
that woman's
    wing, beneath
brief moment
    fingers splayed
your out-
    stretched palm

fraying heart
    an errant
strand, hairbrush
    mislaid
a river
    braided
gray brown gold

you catch
    It up
as if to drink

    quick
silver
    spills
from your hand

Forecast

On the bank of the Charles
inhaling the weather
which includes the sun
and the sun on water
and the long week of rain
just past
          she is thinking
of two women, recently met,
of startling plumage
and names like Mabel or Jane

the ache of possibility
nothing yet exhausted
the endlessness of need

to come into the circle
of her and her attention
how or when she cannot fathom
but knows that it must be.