The HyperTexts

The poems below are for the love of my life: my beautiful, sweet, wonderful, captivating wife, Beth. Elizabeth is a noble—even a regal—name. Beth is a sweet, gentle, tender name. They both suit her, because she combines the best attributes of nobility— courage, loyalty and a strong sense of justice—with a sweet, gentle tenderness. The "terrible" in my title above, and in the first line of the poem below, is "terrible" in the sense of "inspiring awe."

Enigma

O, terrible angel,
bright lover and avenger,
full of whimsical light
and vile anger;
wild stranger,
seeking the solace of night,
or the danger;
pale foreigner,
alien to man, or savior.

Who are you,
seeking consolation and passion
in the same breath,
screaming for pleasure, bereft
of all articles of faith,
finding life
harsher than death?

Grieving angel,
giving more than taking,
how lucky the man
who has found in your love,
this—our reclamation;
fallen wren,
you must strive to fly
though your heart is shaken;
weary pilgrim,
you must not give up
though your feet are aching;
lonely child,
lie here still in my arms;
you must soon be waking.



Because Her Heart Is Tender

She scrawled soft words in soap: "Never Forget,"
Dove-white on her car's window, and the wren,
because her heart is tender, might regret
it called the sun to wake her. As I slept,
she heard lost names recounted, one by one.

She wrote in sidewalk chalk: "Never Forget,"
and kept her heart's own counsel. No rain swept
away those words, no tear leaves them undone.

Because her heart is tender with regret,
bruised by razed towers' glass and steel and stone
that shatter on and on and on and on,
she stitches in wet linen: "NEVER FORGET,"
and listens to her heart's emphatic song.

The wren might tilt its head and sing along
because its heart once understood regret
when fledglings fell beyond, beyond, beyond ...
its reach, and still the boot-heeled world strode on.

She writes in adamant: "NEVER FORGET"
because her heart is tender with regret.



Are You the Thief

When I touch you now,
O sweet lover,
full of fire,
melting like ice
in my embrace,
when I part the delicate white lace,
baring pale flesh,
and your face
is so close
that I breathe your breath
and your hair surrounds me like a wreath . . .

tell me now,
O sweet, sweet lover,
in good faith:
are you the thief
who has stolen my heart?



Because You Came to Me

Because you came to me with sweet compassion
and kissed my furrowed brow and smoothed my hair,
I do not love you after any fashion,
but wildly, in despair.

Because you came to me in my black torment
and kissed me fiercely, blazing like the sun
upon parched desert dunes, till in dawn’s foment
they melt, I am undone.

Because I am undone, you have remade me
as suns bring life, as brilliant rains endow
the earth below with leaves, where you now shade me
and bower me, somehow.

She Gathered Lilacs

She gathered lilacs
and arrayed them in her hair;
tonight, she taught the wind to be free.

She kept her secrets
in a silver locket;
her companions were starlight and mystery.

She danced all night
to the beat of her heart;
with her tears she imbued the sea.

She hid her despair
in a crystal jar,
and never revealed it to me.

She kept her distance
as though it were armor;
gauntlet thorns guard her heart like the rose.

Love!—awaken, awaken
to see what you've taken
is still less than the due my heart owes!



Warming Her Pearls

Warming her pearls, her breasts
gleam like anachronisms.
Her belly is a bit rotund . . .
she might have stepped out of a Rubens.



Moments

There were moments
full of promise,
like the petal-scented rainfall
of early spring,
when to hold you in my arms
and to kiss your willing lips
seemed everything.

There are moments
strangely empty
full of pale unearthly twilight
—how the cold stars stare!—
when to be without you
is a dark enchantment
the night and I share.



She Spoke

She spoke
and her words
were like a ringing echo dying
or like smoke
rising and drifting
while the earth below is spinning.

She awoke
with a cry
from a dream that had no ending,
without hope
or strength to rise,
into hopelessness descending.

And an ache
in her heart
toward that dream, retreating,
left a wake
of small waves
in circles never completing.



Let Me Give Her Diamonds

Let me give her diamonds
for my heart's
sharp edges.

Let me give her roses
for my soul's
thorn.

Let me give her solace
for my words
of treason.

Let the flowering of love
outlast a winter
season.

Let me give her books
for all my lack
of reason.

Let me give her candles
for my lack
of fire.

Let me kindle incense,
for our hearts
require

the breath-fanned
flaming perfume
of desire.



Lightning

There are times before the appearance of the comet
when the course of a life is set,
then we enter into the moment.

Skies of blue, skies of slate, skies of ecstatic violet and jet—
the times to come, the moments we would share . . .
were merely potential then. Still, the very air

was charged with possibilities, as though
lightning lurked beyond the horizon, in obscure and distant skies . . .
until I looked into your sparking eyes.



Sparks

Unto the night
with its moon bright-ascending,
I whisper your name
and the shimmering rain
pauses, then ceases descending.

Who are you child?
The owl also wonders,
and the heavy-lidded sky,
with its bizarre lightnings and thunders . . .
still more exciting, the electricity the thought of you conjures.



Passionate One

Love of my life,
light of my morning,
arise brightly dawning,
for you are my sun.

Give me of heaven
both manna and leaven,
desirous Presence,
Passionate One.



Elemental

There is within her a welling forth
of love unfathomable.
She is not comfortable
with the thought of merely loving:
but she must give all.

At night, she loves the storm's calamitous call.
Nay, longs for it. Why?
O. if a man understood, he might understand her.
But that would never do!
Beth, as you embrace the storm,

so I embrace elemental you.



Wildest, Truest

Hers is the wildest heart,
though increasingly tame,
like a thunderstorm
becoming rain.

Hers is the truest heart
I'll ever know:
an immaculate expanse
of virgin snow.



Righteous

Come to me tonight
in the twilight, O, and the full moon rising,
spectral and ancient, will mutter a prayer.

Gather your hair
and pin it up, knowing
that I will release it a moment anon.

We are not one,
nor is there a scripture
to sanctify nights you might spend in my arms,

but the swarms
of stars revolving above us
revel tonight, the most ardent of lovers.



Will there be Starlight

Will there be starlight
tonight
while she gathers
damask
and lilac
and sweet-scented heathers?

And will she find flowers,
or will she find thorns
guarding the petals
of roses unborn?

Oh, will there be moonlight
tonight
while she gathers
seashells
and mussels
and albatross feathers?

And will she find treasure
or will she find pain
at the end of this rainbow
of moonlight on rain?



Love Is Not Love

Love is not love that never looked
within itself and questioned all,
curled up like a zygote in a ball,
throbbed, sobbed and shook.

(Or went on a binge at a nearby mall,
and would not cook.)

Love is not love that never winced,
then smiled, convinced
that soar’s the prerequisite of fall.

When all
its wounds and scars have been saline-rinsed,
where does Love find the wherewithal
to try again,
endeavor, when

all that it knows
is: O, because!



Kissin’ ’n’ buzzin’

Kissin’ ’n’ buzzin’
the bees rise
in a dizzy circle of two.
Oh, when I’m with you,
I feel like kissin’ ’n’ buzzin’ too.



The Quickening

I never meant to love you
when I held you in my arms
promising you sagely
non-committal charms;
and I never meant to need you
when I touched your tender lips
with kisses that intrigued my own.
Such kisses I had never known,
nor a heartbeat in my fingertips!



If

If I regret
fire in the sunset
exploding on the horizon,
then let me regret loving you.

If I forget
for even a moment
that you are the only one,
then let me forget that the sky is blue.

If I should yearn
in a season of discontentment
for the vagabond light of a distaff moon,
let dawn remind me that you are my sun.

If I should burn—one moment less brightly,
one moment less true—
then with wild scorching kisses,
inflame me, inflame me, inflame me anew.



Virginal, for Elizabeth

For an hour
every wildflower
beseeches her,
"To thy breast,
Elizabeth."

But she is mine;
her lips divine
and her breasts and hair
are mine alone.
Let the wildflowers moan.



Every Man Has a Dream

Every man has a dream that he cannot quite touch . . .
a dream of contentment, of soft, starlit rain,
of a breeze in the evening that, rising again,
reminds him of something that cannot have been,
and he calls this dream love.

And each man has a dream that he fears to let live,
for he knows that to hope is to throw away all,
so he curses, denies it and locks it within
the cells of his soul and he calls it a sin,
this madness, this love.

But each man in his living falls prey to his dreams,
and he struggles, but so he ensures that he falls,
and he finds in the end that he cannot deny
the hope that he feels or the tears that he cries
in the darkness of night for this light he calls love.



Oasis

I want tears to form again
in the shriveled glands of these eyes
dried all these long years
by too much heated knowing.

I want tears to course down
these parched cheeks,
to star these cracked lips
like an improbable dew

in the heart of a desert.
I want words to burble up
like happiness, like the thought of love,
like the overwhelming, shimmering thought of you

to a nomad who
has only known drought.




It’s Not Too Late

It’s not too late to sing of love, to sing
of beauty, though the moonless night obscures
each thing of sprawling loveliness that clings
to life in nettled darkness, and endures.

It’s not too late to think of dawn, to think
of brightness on the water, of your face
unguarded at the moment planets sink
beneath some dim horizon, into Space.

It’s not too soon to dream of night, to dream
of sleeping to your breasts’ soft pantomime
of earth’s own breathing sleep, of hills that climb
and dip, and taste of lilac and jasmine.



Melting

Entirely, as spring consumes the snow,
the thought of you consumes me: I am found
in rivulets, dissolved to what I know
of former winters’ passions. Underground,
perhaps one slender icicle remains
of what I was before, in some dark cave—
a stalactite, long calcified, now drains
to sodden pools, whose milky liquid laves
the colder rock, thus washing something clean
that never saw the light, that never knew
the crust could break above, that light could stream:
so luminous,
                       so bright,
                                         so beautiful . . .
I lie revealed, and so I stand transformed,
and all because you smiled on me, and warmed.



Afterglow

The night is full of stars—which ones exist?
A trillion years from now, perhaps we’ll know.
For now, I hold your wan hands to my lips,
your living hands—warm, capable and slow . . .
so slow to feel this reckless night in me,
this moon in ceaseless orbit I became,
compelled by wilder gravity to flee
night’s universe of suns, for one pale flame . . .
for one pale flame that seemed to signify
the Zodiac of all, the meaning of
love’s wandering flight past aimlessness. To lie
in dawning recognition is enough . . .
enough each night to bask in you, to know
the face of love . . . eyes closed—its afterglow.



Becoming

A willowy yew thrust out its shoots
through all the long decades
of defiant rains . . .

till, silhouetted in a winter mist,
ice-shagged and -barnacled,
it sagged and groaned.

Ecstatic feet no longer strayed
within its eerie borders; so it knew
a kind of peace.

Though overgrown
with stiff brown moss,
it did not care,

awaiting,
in the chalcedonic silence there,
the pale catharsis of that face:

that face, that Face,—
the very countenance and sum
of all that it had reached for,

and become.



All her sorrow

All her sorrow,
never borne lightly
but contemplated nightly,
accumulates
to an almost infinite mass.
She is weary,
prone to eerie
haunting dreams.
And now it seems
her tears grow heavy
till no levee
can withstand,
nor any man.



Your Gift

Counsel, console.
This is your gift.
Kiss and encourage.
Calm, gently lift
each wounded heart.
Mend every rift.
Bid pain depart.
Keep cause to weep
for your own untaught heart.



Flux

You were like sunshine and rain—
begetting rainbows,
full of contradictions, like the intervals
between light and shadow.

That within you which I most opposed
drew me closer still,
as a magnet exerts its unyielding pull
on insensate steel.



Kin

O pale, austere moon,
haughty beauty,

what do we know of love,
honor, duty?



The Stand

Love is the end of all endeavor—
the perfect work no hand
can do, or undo . . . the Stand
we take against Forever.



Grace

I did not squander my light
but kept in it a place
of pure human embrace.

Now some might cry Disgrace!
as if I’d failed some test
but I would say more blessed

because I touched your face.



Sonnet to Grace

In the blackest night the brightest stars, ablaze,
light my path, as you do, and amaze.

I need no higher compass point, no unseen spangled heaven,
no priest’s or pastor’s incommensurate leaven,

no ghostly grace, no sacrament,
no platitudes, no testament,

no altar calls, no hymns defiling grace.
For I find grace in your warmth, your eyes, your face.

I find grace in the plenitude
of love, and in love’s amplitude.

I need no other, want no other grace
than to touch your hair, your hands, your breasts, your face.

The wildest wish I ever wished, I vow,
I wished upon the star who guides me now.



What If We Had Never Met?

What if we had never met;
had never fumbled with the fragility of love;
had never swallowed the bittergreen taste of regret;
had never choked on the ash of remorse;
had never smiled, groped and swept
a disgruntled remark under the carpet
like a cheap cigarette?

What if we had never kept
the secret expectation of other lives
in secluded compartments like knives
tarnished with unuse,
though they had been meant to slice
our hearts open like grapefruit?

What it our love had not gone a little sour at times,
like a dour vinegar extracted from wine,
beneficial only for its astringency?

What if we had never met? . . .

What if we had never met?
How could I not have loved you,
have not have planted the seed of our son deep within you
in the waterfall course of your expectation
of a light so bright I could not comprehend,
but stood blind,
overwhelmed,
drowning in radiance?

What if we had never met?



Enchanted

Sleep tight;
the earth's delight
is not the dawn,

but this disbelieving finger,
able to linger
such lips upon.



Is the mirror unkind

To your lovely brown eyes is the mirror unkind,
revealing far more than reflections defined,
in superficial glass, so lacking in depth?
Is the mirror unkind, at times, darling Beth?

What you see perhaps others see different by far,
as our sun from Centauri is just a “small” star,
but here it brings life and warms each day’s start.
Oh, and a mirror can never reveal a true heart.



For nothing, all . . .

For nothing but a moon-lit night
and a few trillion stars
strewn about like so much silver dust,

for nothing save the wine, the candlelight
and your heady, perfume sedulous as must,
and your eyes so full of trust,

I fell in love.



Give Her All Stars

Gather up Sparks from the hearth of the heavens;
give her all Stars to heighten her eyes;
give her the Moon or some vagabond Planet;
give her the Wind, the communion of sighs.

Tell her the tale of a butterfly princess
climbing to heaven on gossamer wings,
or sing her sweet songs of the last true enchantment:
the wild, plaintive song the sad nightingale sings.

Or favor her heart with a white incantation;
let unicorns bear her to Aasgard above . . .
none of these mysteries are mine to give her,
but that which I have I will give her—my love.



Incommunicado

I do not deserve her,
nor can I give her what she deserves:
all the sweet and gently-rendered words
(a failing all too common in a man).

If I could, I would tell her
that her kindness has touched me in so many ways,
that the light of her presence has brightened my days,
that I love her.

If I knew how, I would show her
how her love has become the sweet-beckoning light
that illumines my path through the darkest night,
like a radiant meteor shower.

If I could tell her.



Lines for our Fourteenth Anniversary

Beth is the gentlest name I know—
as light on the tongue as a flake of snow.

It seems the name a child might teach
things that fall within his reach,
like autumn leaves, the art of speech.

It’s bruised, sometimes, like purple petals
sequestered by nasty, sharp-spined nettles.

It’s cloudy, like the voice of kettles
crooning softly to themselves.
It’s curious, like the songs of elves.

Oh, Beth is the tenderest name I know—
as light as the sound of the deepening snow.



Love Is the Strongest Diamond

Love is the strongest diamond,
though it’s never hardened by time.

No weight can ever crush it;
it only grows more sublime.

Though we lie in our graves, my darling,
we need fear no ultimate crime

for our love cannot be stolen,
as long as your heart is mine.

This diamond is merely a token
of our love: precious, bright and unbroken.

This diamond, and also this rhyme.



Constant Forever

She is all sweetness and light,
and about her there is the fragrance
of roses, and the vagrance
of love is in her eyes.

Still, when she cries,
when she is weary, though her heart is true,
she despairs every cloud, bids the sky to be blue
every day,

for that is her way.
And, no, I would never change her,
be cruel to her, no, nor a stranger,
but as she is to me, so let me stay:

constant forever.



For Beth, on Valentine's Day

I could not find a gift as rare,
as sweetly scented as your hair,
though fields of fragrant lilacs bloom
exquisite, delicate and fair.

I could not hope to find a prize
as captivating as your eyes,
though crystal shackles light within
its prismatic device.

I thought to give a gift of words;
they came, then fled like flitting birds,
till I was left alone again
with lines of pale and palsied verse.

But let me wish you on this day
a life resplendent, festooned, gay . . .
and let me wish for you each night
peace, dreams and stars in bright array.

And may God's peace, the whitest dove,
smile down on you from high above.
For one who has so many gifts,
accept one more—this poem, with love.



Entreaty

Her heart has borne too much sadness,
an overwhelming weight, the heaviness
of learning too soon of the emptiness
of being alone.

Now we are one,
but caught up sometimes in our differences,
forgetting the balm of a sweet caress,
our arguments border on heartlessness.

Yet I love her so.
Beth, darling, don't go . . .

My life without you would be meaningless
and my love without you become nothingness
and my dreams without you would be naught, or less.

Do not make it so.



There Are Many Tricks of Words

There are many tricks of words
and all have been used before
by Artists in search of Rhymes
and Accolades galore;
so let me sincerely say
I love you, as simple men may.

There are many tricks of words,
most of them overused
by Poets gone overboard,
Titanically over-enthused.
So let me sincerely say
I love you, as simpletons may.

Since poets have praised women’s eyes
(though none are more lovely than yours),
oh, let me be greatly despised
if I speak of their wild allures!

Since poets have praised women’s hair
(though yours is more auburn and fair
than Helen’s, who sent fleets astray),
why should I idly compare?

Since poets have praised women’s love,
(though I know yours is brighter by far
than even the angels’ above,
and higher, a Halcyon Star),
it is futile to conjure mere words
when they seem like the twitt’rings of birds!

And so, let me not make the mistake
of praising with lackluster rhymes
a woman beyond all my art.
I’d be sentenced, I’m sure, for such crimes
to dungeons where paupers await
the great Final Stroke, their just fate.

No, let me content myself
with words simple, gentle and true,
and let humble words be my wealth:
I really do love you.



Waterboy

Nightly, I’m the bearer of water
to Poseidon’s thirstiest daughter!

Not a thankless task, but strange:
did Homer or Will ever rearrange

their epic schedules, to adjust them to those
of wives demanding fresh H20s?



She is brighter than dawn

There’s a light about her
like the moon through a mist:
a starry incandescence
with which she is blessed

and my heart to her light
like the tide now is pulled . . .
she is fair, O, and bright
like the moon silver-veiled.

There’s a fire within her
like the sun's leaping forth
to lap up the darkness
of night from earth's hearth

and my eyes to her flame
like a moth now are drawn
till my heart is consumed.
She is brighter than dawn.



Lines offered in a cringing act of repentance for my lovely wife Beth on our seventeenth Wedding Anniversary

My muse cried, “Whip it out!”
(This poem, I mean.) And so
although I live in doubt
and peril (as you know)
for stupidly forgetting
this quite momentous Date,
I hope you’ll keep in mind:
this isn’t really late.



Lines in which the Poet, intent on Art in the form of a Mushy Poem, implores his lovely wife Beth for a special consideration on their seventeenth Wedding Anniversary

Don’t be a person from Porlock!
I’m doing the best that I can
to write you a Mushy Poem!
Relax there, on the divan!

My Muse is ostensibly balky:
I’ll soon change her “s” to an “l”!
I’m hitting, it seems, every false key,
and each interruption’s sheer hell.

A “Genius at Work” sign’s been posted.
Now here in this hell I implore
that all interrupters get roasted,
till I am soon toasted, and more!

I’m working on ART, heaven’s sake!
Immortality soon will be yours:
a Mushy Poem for the Ages,
if only you’ll honor my doors.



Lines in which the Poet, having forgotten his seventeenth Wedding Anniversary, implores his increasingly mulish Muse for Inspiration

“Mushy Poem in Progress!”
The sign’s been posted: Heed!
and “Genius Hard at Work
(though rarely at full speed)!”

Now here I sit and tap at
my querulous QWERTY keys
and wish I’d bought a Hallmark:
Muse, heed my fervent pleas!



Lines in which the Poet, having forgotten his seventeenth Wedding Anniversary, finally produces his Masterpiece, despite a lingering Trepidation that his wife may not buy it

This is my Mushy Poem.
I worked on it real hard.
Now you’re Immortal, dear,
like a Cameo in Sard!

Now you rank with Mona Lisa
as Enigmas to the world,
and with all the world’s great Oysters,
since you’re my priceless Pearl!

How did I work my Magic?
That Secret I must keep.
But I’ve no doubt you’ll revel
in a poem this Great, and Deep.

You really mustn’t thank me,
for you’re the Inspiration
of this deep, Mushy Poem
(and my great Trepidation).



Kinder than Light

for Beth on our seventeenth wedding anniversary

You were kinder than light
to an up-reaching flower
and sweeter than rain
to the bees in their bower,
and I bloomed at your touch
in our love’s dawning hour,
but now all the more,
for that is your power.

Though the sun daily fled
and soon left me in night,
though the rain gaily sped
as bright spring turned to blight,
yet you always remained
with your passionate sweetness.
No, your sun never set,
nor thus our completeness.

Though suns, moons and planets
still drift off, anon;
though galaxies twinkle,
then wink out—soon gone;
we draw ever nearer,
our orbits the same
since that day you became
my sun, moon and rain.



Artless

for Beth on our seventeenth wedding anniversary

Only hammered arpeggios invoking despair
guerdon me here while you cordon your hair
in white scarves, tiaras, combs, straightpins and bows.
Of two different worlds (how, God only knows)
yet born to one planet revolving through time,
evolving somehow (brilliant angels from slime?),
both of us innocent, birth our sole crime,
I lack your sweet arts, so I proffer this rhyme.

O, when in our journey will our footsteps meet
in some common ground? When will our eyes greet
with some comprehension, the great fictive whole
—or is it the “reality”—of the farcical “soul”?
(That your heart is real, I have no doubt,
yet a puff of flame blows the candle out.)

You are more sure, than I am, of life.
Your heart is so true that I made you my wife
with great admiration for all that you are,
as immortal, I’m sure, as any bright star.
(But where will we live when life’s over, and how?)
I hope you’re quite through with your buttons by now!

Mars shines, and Venus, and men go to war
while women dream love’s like some quaint romance store
where candies are purchased, and sweet Harlequins
wherein evil men perish for their chauvinistic sins
(the ones who would rape them, but of course never those
who merely rip bodices from breast-tautened clothes
and ravish their slaves—on some peculiar cue
of which, I’m quite sure, few men have a clue).

And so I await, with great admiration
and also, I fear, some real trepidation,
your arrival in glory and style down the stair
and hope I look (ahem) debonair.



Love, if it were fragile

Love, if it were fragile,
would blow away like a puff of smoke in the wind,
but love is not fragile,
and though we have lashed out, and though we have sinned
against each other,
still, I would have no other lover,
nor can I see myself waking in the morning without you:
how could that be?

Emptiness and darkness gather around us
and the loss of hope confounds us
and our apathy and our despair sometimes astound us,
and yet love still can be,
still surrounds us.

How can that be?

Love is a seed
and it needs
to be weeded,
watered
and tenderly
tended,
praised
and befriended.

Love needs compassion and infinite patience.
Love needs a touch of the cheek, or a kiss.
Love needs a promise of tenderest romance.
Love needs, and we need, sweet moments, like this.



I love you yet

Perhaps there’s not enough love in my heart
to light the night when the pathways grow dark,
but I swear that I would never do you any harm,
nor forget that your love is the sacred charm
that reminds me, even now ,
of each dear dream and vow,
and makes me long for their fulfillment, somehow.

In a world of empty promises and broken dreams,
where illusions obscure reality, and the haunted child screams,
I have tried to be true, yet I fear I have failed,
for how could I sail the dark seas that you sailed?

How can I explain my frustration, except to say
that I saw the withering of the flower, day by day,—
a flower fair and lovely, but not under my control . . .
and the flower’s travail and despair touched my soul,
but I could not make it whole.

And, if I spoke, then your torture only grew,
and the tears flowed, and the damage became new,
so that it seemed a terrible silence was my only course . . .
and, if silence fell between us, still it seemed the lesser curse.

And it seems to me some things remain beyond a man—
your life is your own, to do with as you can.
And I cannot grant you happiness, nor lessen your despair,
but still I know I have failed you. I should have been there,
if only to care.

How many nights I thought to reach out, to touch you and draw near,
to hold you gently in my arms, and to kiss away each tear . . .
but something in me held me back: what, I cannot say
except rejection seemed a hand we both were bent to play.

And you, with your rejection, and I alone with mine
slept alone together, strangely parted by a line
that grew between us day by day, till we were cold and hard
and all we had was meaningless, and “love” was just a word.

But even now I think of times when you lay in my arms
and we were one together, and sought love’s sillier charms,
then talked until the morning of all our hopes and dreams,
and laughed—until the tears flowed—of silly, giddy things.
And I know that not a moment of those times will I forget,
and I know that such sweet tenderness I never will regret,
and I know this one thing also—my love, I love you yet.



With Reawakened Eyes

Here, in the still hour
when the moon reappears
to countenance love
and calm human fears
with aethereal light,
denying bleak Night
the power to rule
those blessed by fierce sight,
I see you again
with reawakened eyes
as sweet now as then—
as gentle, more wise.

Time taught you tenderness.
Time, oh, and love.
Now, love in ascendance,
soar high, my dove!—
till Love reigns in heaven
there is no love like yours
to be found in the earth’s
diurnal course.
So smile for me here—
let my sweet sun appear!



Heaven

Here in the prime of her beauty, Delight
spangles her eyes with borealises and auras;
her Light is more pure than the stars’ at their height
and is sure to grow brighter ten thousand tomorrows
despite earth’s dark sorrows.

Love is her element, natural as Light
to stars wreathed in flame in their myriad choruses.
To be without her is to flounder in night,
one’s only “respite” the apostate’s discourses,
chained to his horses.

For as God is Love, he comprises her heart
and fully indwells it with immaculate forces;
her Love is eclectic, striking, electric
like lightning to men standing yoked in their courses
sweeping kings’ bourses.

She is not chained to their servile beliefs,
but longs for the freedom of many, and all,
and cries for her sisters and all their dark griefs
at the hands of enslavers, or should I say “paws”?
For Love is the first and the last of her laws.

Their day’s almost over; hers nearly beginning.
When, when will they weary of swabbing and sinning?
When Love has her reign
and no serfs cry “Abstain!”
her kingdom (and heaven’s) will gaily remain.

Amen



something

something about her
something gentle
something exceedingly gentle

something exceedingly gentle
like a soft breath of wind
caressing numb limbs
consoling shocked leaves
reminding them all—
now, soon they must fall
while the earth gathers petals and grieves

something about her
something gentle

Something about her
something compelling
something wildly compelling

something wildly compelling
like the imperial moon
with earth’s tides in tow
haunting strange oceans far, far below
whose waters embrace
her reflected face
as if there is something they know

something about her
something compelling

something about her
something alluring,
something sweetly alluring

something sweetly alluring
like the day seeking rest
with the sun to the west
when the moon’s overhead
and the veils of the night
grow, ah!, glitter-bright
with white stars being drawn to our bed

something about her
something alluring

something about her
something comforting
something dreamily comforting

something dreamily comforting
like a warm Afghan
her hand in my hand
as the embers die in the hearth
and the moon appears
with her train of stars
and a silence, a stillness descends on the earth

something about her
something comforting.



Incense

To be so fair
where there is sorrow,
a light must shine.
Tonight, it shines.

Now, like a rose
whose sun’s ascending
toward your light
my heart inclines.

To be so sweet
when life is bitter,
love must bloom.
O, what a Bloom!

Here at the altar,
my desirable Priestess
my heart gives thanks
for such perfume.



Tonight how I miss you

Tonight how I miss you, as never before,
though morning is only a moment away.
Oh, I know I should sleep, but I lie here, distraught,
as you flit through my mind—such a wild, haunting thought.

And love is a dream that I lately imagined—
a dream, yet so real I can touch it at times.
But how to explain? I can hardly envision
myself without you, like a farce without mimes.

Deep, deep in my soul lurks a creature of fire,
dormant, not living unless you are near;
now, because you are gone, he grows dim, and in dire
want of your presence, he wavers, I fear . . .

How he and I wish, how we wish you were here.



Absence

When she is gone,
when she is far away,
when day is done,
when she is not there to say
that she loves me,
when morning seems far away
and darkness is like a sea
stretching endlessly
between night and day,
sometimes I dream her near
though sleep remains far away,
and I say . . .
I tell her how much I love her
thinking she might appear . . .
but the sky grows only more gray . . .



Twinings

for Beth and Laura

At evening sometimes light streams through gaunt trees
illuminating leaves sweet morning wore
more gay, more greenly, freshened by a breeze
that blew in from some paradisal shore . . .

Yet if among the few remaining leaves
of autumn we hear psalms, not quite romances,
but more like musings someone’s heart believes
who also thinks life gives us second chances,

we might presume to listen, to be still,
as if the oaks’ soft murmurings were meant
for us alone. So listen, with a will
to understand, and I will not relent,

but tell you all I know of how there came
to be two trees, more lovely than the rest,
and how two tardy girls dashed through strange rains
to stand beneath them, bosomed at Love’s breast.

*

They come here now, they move among the slow
remorseful leaves, like shadows of themselves.
Mature in every aspect, how they glow
with senescence of life, and how it delves

the very heart, and carries love intact
through filaments and filigrees, to rise
like maple-nectar sweetened through the impact
of water borne from earth toward blue skies.

And many fruitful tears their eyes have known,
and fruitless also. Bruited they have stood,
half won of earth and half reft out of stone.
Their roots have made bare wilderness a wood

of pleasant greenery, though winter beckons.
Their fledglings flock below. They calmly gaze
toward the certain future autumn reckons.
The sons they’ve borne will outlast winter’s blaze

across the hinterlands, and even here.
The girls they were, somehow they still remain.
They whisper to themselves, and they cohere.
Their limbs entangle, twine. A sweet refrain

bursts from their lips, few men will ever know.
The tardy girls have come, through many rains,
to women now, and bowering here, bestow
great shelter on the sons of their wild pains.



Dawn

for Beth and Laura

Bring your particular strength
to the strange nightmarish fray:
wrap up your cherished ones
in the golden light of day.