The Apple Tree, the Singing, and the Gold, and: He is Running, and: To Words, and: All I Want

The Apple Tree, the Singing, and the Gold, and: He is Running, and: To Words, and: All I Want

The Apple Tree, the Singing, and the Gold

All losses echo one great loss— expulsion from the womb when we are born.
Is it the same? The same for all of us?

The orange groves of childhood. Stolen dust
of our ancestral home. Exile and scorn.
Must every loss evoke the primal loss?

Harsh words. Unrequited love. The mess
of lust, a broken hope, an oath forsworn.
But isn't loss the same for all of us?

The way the deaths began—so slowly—first
an aunt, a hapless schoolmate mourned—
Must every loss recall the rest?

A brother next, grandparents, parents, friends. The rush
of soldiers, coffins draped with flags. Torn
earth. Is it the same for all of us?

Beauty, hearing, sight, dread nothingness
behind a missing word. The synapse gone.
Each loss is hostage to the final loss.
The same. The same for all of us.

He is Running

in the rain and the rain
feels good. How good
to have a body
he is thinking,
though he's not exactly
thinking as he runs
among the raindrops
tapping out a city
metric, little
psalm and ditty
of the body's
pleasure, how
precise the rigging,
tight, the buttock
muscles locking in
their grooves the
neurons setting off
their chained
explosions—I
will never die
insists the body
as it hums along
inside the rain. . . .

To Words

their shapes and sounds and syllables
their silences, the little song they make in the mouth
the way they fill with breath and sail away,
or whirl like caged winds in the dark brain-closet

to their swift couplings, the strict rules
that keep them dancing in lines,
the way they break out and return

to the ones that return
and the ones unspoken,
the ones released and regretted—
                                        even you, little foxes, false friends

to words that ushered us in:
Mama, Papa, dog—whatever moves in us
and moves, monkey heritage passed down,
potsherds of history I hold in my mouth when I speak,

to my mother's words that will circle in me till I die,
to dead words lying on their sides in airless tombs,
their songs silenced, feathers furled,

whole languages extinguished, with their flavors
and flowers and hymns and innuendoes,
their epics and curses, the voices they lived in.

All I Want

Hic, haec, hoc.

The 4 a.m. robin rehearsing his Latin declensions.

Huius, huius, huius.

Too soon. Too soon.

I turn in my bed like a roast on a spit.

This room. This flesh. This world.

Love beside me sprawls oblivious
behind huge swells of breath.

Huius, huius, huius.This night. This dark. This loam.

All I want is everything. A stop
for the hours passing.

Horum, harum. . . .

All the old remedies have failed:
sex, booze, pills, milk.

And how shall I count sheep when there's
only one left in the fold? The others

have slipped through the unlatched gate.
This field of gathering light. This once. This now.