Alembic

Alembic

The heat in the palm of your hand’s

a trivet I set my heart against.

Bare and without a bowl the only home is

is air and the care of your slight brine

tongue’s a simple wine in the tabernacle

of your mouth.  The votive sacral

light is lit in your iris.  Your ruby blaze,

contained but at ache of praying,

waits between the closing

of the doors and the knock, a primed

pump hearing, the ear rising, the draw

of years after dowsing this spot

and water, always water, we smell

it first, a scent of subtle musk

at lie on the arm held out, at reach, see?  Eat!

Moth, 2:30 a.m.

Moth, 2:30 a.m.

Mustn’t she?  In weather like this?  Because a month ago

it was forty degrees warmer it was warm so warm on the ground

she didn’t need this: at two thirty in the morning when the click

of the latch in my brain is a meek concussion when the knob on the door

turns as by some prowl a small light two really pointing

down but going up too up enough to illuminate the tree

branches outside to be a soft electric dependable moon oh yes

she needs dependable.  Tap.  Tap Tap.  It’s the tap of her thin finger

carapace her sleeve her sheath from thorax to abdomen that really clashes

with the glass but not a clash really more a desperate act of getting

it all out before she in thischill beats as much warmth into herself as she can.

It’s 28 degrees outside.  And when light arrives it’s proving to be see

your breath weather.  She (and this is fleeting it is so brief) she is a measure

of foreboding a messenger with her thin needy wings and my funeral

light is the only one on in the neighborhood.  But listen: in this second floor

bedroom when my daughter when she was small used to sleep in a crib

under this window she'd toss off  her blanket her milk dreams her unzipped

cocoon.  And a tiny nightlight under the window.  And that very same :  Tap.  Tap

Tap.  But brief.  Because she was born on the edge of winter.  It was as generous 

as an early green in the way it drops off at night and makes us follow warm and then

a hot summer then back to winter to turn the bed down to pull the old quilt up right

to the chin the way this light must seem to do to the moth.  It seduces.  She

can’t help her brief life.  Or her urge to light and to fly the rest of it up

to the glass and tap in, spending the last of herself arriving, arriving.

After the Total Lunar Eclipse

After the Total Lunar Eclipse

Where does a smile go, or the upward

            glance,

the sudden warm movement of the

            heart?

                        Does the

            universe

we dissolve into

taste of us a little?

                        Rilke, from The Second Duino Elegy            

Content to dwell in glimpses, in lifted

curtains, to save myself I turn

as when the zucchetto of the sky

slips but is invisibly steadied, and I come back

inside while our whole world’s 

awe gawk and night drunk.  I’ll take you

full in the face, but I’ll duck under

the wide skirt of the maple and hide,

not shy, but, what’s it called? the other awe,

the I’ve held you in the dark while you broke

open awe, the coming through into thaw

after a long, long winter out?  I think:

in the cradle of my elbow, where a new baby’s

almost always content, there your head

sunk in rest in me, sunk deep beneath (others,

gawkers, scoff, but we blink them

away) and times like these, rare beneath fall’s

shifts and canopies, I’m the Magdela

on her knees and Jesus, dead and free, finally

draws open her veil.  And though soldiers, though

brothers rant or weep, she, with all the bloody

muster, wipes the stones, gibbet, and all,

rubs up the air, temple stones, road stones,

any cauterizing- the- puncture stone,

cascading into the hole when it’s all, after

the appointed hour, lifted out.  And when, open-

mouthed like the cave, it goes dark as gelded

breath and she tastes in such dark the betraying

rain, it’s musth-dust, the brand new

sweating hollow.  Oh Mary.  We have only

to look and look

away.  We come back with the winding

sheets and the sweet viscous grease.  Under our

gauze this eclipse never passes.  But we

step out, stumble over, fall through.  Soon

the light of noon.  Soon the second then

the third day.  Soon the closed stone’s rolled.

Soon, though veiled, soon: she/he

you/me: Rabboni! Free.

kiss in the dark moon

kiss in the dark moon 

your raven face is feather
 lace lingerie.  But beneath's

a coral palate, a sea-
pen of living

ridges only your own
tongue can take

for granted.  Let me,

in my own 
muscle, until each is silk

closure kissed, let me 
slide

every on- and- on mile of it, slide like my

tongue were those split sole ballet

shoes that take to the stage 
the way the old 
the old
 the old knowing

 lovers take to each 
other.

 above this ridge 

is the low hill set still in the rafter

of your mouth.  And the tip

of my zested vent is rubbed
ripe as August,

and you, during all this, your lips

a fearless pricked fist
  and my thumb,
 my thumb finally

parting each ridge, each pleated cheek

 unfurling, each levee gap piping,

and then the soft wet

 sky behind,

gathering

Gibbous is: almost:

Gibbous is: almost:

almost filled

almost drained

all that glow

all that dusk

please, meet me full

in this and

lips mine brush

just tips yours

of the spare cilia

quill soft

along the narrow road

below the thumb

muscles, wrist—

my breath

is

(when beneath

my undone veil)

abductor tense

paused

the moment

the moment

filling

draining

Moon: Once More in the Orchard

Moon: Once More in the Orchard

You won’t rise until day's halfway through,

between noon and six

but now, while you scan

the low corners

of the Cortland orchards,

the warmer

autumn fields you'd favored

are lately cooled.  Palm up,

I touch the air

where your face will be

where, when I can,

I'll wait and gaze.

But when the middle of the after-

noon... when someone somewhere

in my life needs a touch

of madness, I'm

soothed smooth for want of you.  I’d ask you

to wait, because seeing

you come

up above the trees,

the way you squeeze through

all those confinements

and labor unscathed,

  is bud’s reiteration still

knocking against the bone
interior

of the apple branch.   But I know

if you so much as lower your eye-

lid I’d be skinned.  I’d be peeled:

shoes, praying knees, silver fillings,

up into the suffocating

fat of the afternoon

heat and scream

or want to, for early morning black.  For

that space, just between you

and me,

where twilight has, for the years

we’ve been trying, broached
the veil, but never, 
not once

  seemed to manage it.
Lifting, light as it is,
light as it is.

After the First Tap

After the First Tap

Licking the thin drip takes two

passes: one to get half

way, the other to achieve

the lip.  It’s like skin raised but not

puckered, how it draws up the scald

and cups it, no pour, no vent

and soon a bulge and that,

what’s not been against my tongue,

has widened to the size

of a maple bud still

building deep in its winter

hive.  It’s a vein of maple

sap now—how after

the shavings have gathered—

after the drill’s been set beside—

and with the soft mallet

the copper spile is tapped.  How it’s effort-

lessly set.  How, before the pail’s

hung, your one drip and then again

the one, drop down that foggy jaw,

and onto the March bark, the true thaw still

holding off.  But here: let me: Let me,

breath wet, catch you soon, prior

to night arriving, before the too cold pause,

and before tomorrow when you’ve been

gathered and poured and hung

empty again, and that first slender acceptance

of the drill, of the spigot,

that first drop of you

is blinked away, is hidden

and banged

against by that pail,

in a winter squall,

is unpraised

and utterly gone.

Full Moon or Pawn to d4

Full Moon or

Pawn to d4

It’s different every time.  It’s different when

what’s first to go is the first to slide,

the pawn taking her opening square

in the middle of the board and waiting.

She’ll stay awhile, protective, wary

of maybe a bishop, or,

ooo, maybe the other (or her own)

Queen.  But see, she’s at ease here, just

doing her own, just small

enough to be called up to stand

against the sky of the player's
palm, white as she is

in her little nub 
of a face and 
small ruff. 

You favor her—Every time 
you rise and a bit more of you 
has slipped out

of the dark, 
Moon, 
by noon

on the second week you’ll nod

to this pawn and she to you

and you’ll both fix

 each other
with shadow.
   Though who

would see or know to see

for the sun, the Queen in any forward

 or corner.  Her shoulder’s

rigid with Worry.  
With Burden.  Moon,

you choose who 

you go completely 
nude for.  And
even though

all the rest are there, even though

the disorder has died 
and the game is nearly mated,

who remains depends

on nothing but withstanding

the concussion

of victory and defeat.
And how warm the room gets

when everyone else leaves.

And how sure and shaky

those fingers are

when it gets dark again

and she reaches

for you and you, 
through the win-

dow bars, 
her

sunt lacrimae rerum

*sunt lacrimae rerum: 

After Symborska’s Returning Birds

An angel made of earthbound protein,

a living kite with glands straight from the Song of Songs…

falls down and lies behind a stone,

which in its own archaic simpleminded way

sees life as a chain of failed events.

                                                Returning Birds

                                                Wislawa Symborska

remember the bed you got up from

with regret, how easily the sheet

lifted from your knee, how simple it fell

against the curve of his spine,

covering nothing of the night before?

remember how the salt of it all

was still on your bruised tongue

and how dry your eyes themselves

were how they dried themselves

to sleep and then when it was early

enough to wash you were the first

one at the sink and you chose

the white cloth so you could see

how deep your sins were? And then

how they spread apart

in the palm of your hand, a trail on the face

cloth?  The stubborn rub, when it’s all sunk

too much, and the only thing lifted

is the cotton itself, when that rub becomes

frenzy, when, like childhood

pencil too heavy in the fist

is scraped away, erased.  Remember?

And that shadow on the page?

And the elastic dust

from the once pink tongue

of your favorite and best

eraser?  That you hesitate, for one second,

to brush away?

*sunt lacrimae rerum

                                                They weep here

For how the world goes, and our own life that passes

Touches their hearts.

New Moon Dark

New Moon: Dark

And this is my robe, slightly singed.

And this is my prophet’s junk.

And this is my twisted face.

A face that did not know it could be beautiful.

                       

                                    “Soliloquy for Cassandra”

                                    Wislawa Symboraka

It makes sense, yes, that you would be

completely free of light (at least

to me) and it would be rain—

not out of any imagined grief,

no, or modesty – it comes

when it comes, like sun—there’s no one

god or new winged servant bird

pouring prophecy from star-hollowed

gourds.  It fits this way because

I’ll make it.  I’ll build

this bridge to it

and when, halfway (and when the

river

is rushing

up,

when

it’s mist

by the time

it reaches my foot’s

arch

and bone

hung down like ripe

Conadria

figs)

I stop to look, finally, up.

And

you’re pulling the tulle from

your shoulder. 

You’re pulling the pin

from your plaited hair.

You’re leaning into Orion

and then the sisters

and then,

and then—

But the rain.

See: if I were

to unzip my rib-skin:

if I were to tip in

to the grail my heart:

there:…

But the rain.

Oh the rain.

And you.  And you.

invisibly away.

Not river.

Not bridge.

Not you

fig or famine, or,

I’ll face it,

moon.