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.