Door in the Mountain: New and Collected Poems, 1965-2003

Once in the nights

So many secrets So many secrets held you in their glass Fear like a green glass on the shelf It hurt like glass It hurt like self Eleventh Brother one arm still a swan’s wing The worst had happened before: love—before I knew it was mine— turned into a wild swan and flew across the rough water Outsider seedword until I die I will be open to you as an egg speechless red Once in the nights Once in the nights I raced through fast snow to drink life from a shoe 10 door in the mountain what I thought was wrong with me with you was not wrong now gates in the dark at thy name hinge Under the gold Under the gold and chalk and brick, beside the rowers on the river, the black lines lived around my crayon bones. One line. And then my heart shut down, even so, inside the lines. I rode out of the sorrowfence blue twine-tied gate into the river grass . . . The Windows Funeral dream “We’ll put them all down in the great book of sleep.” “You may be dead but Don’t stop loving me.” In memory “Don’t hold yourself cheap.” new poems 11 ...