this insisting stare

 this insisting stare--

    how it sifts through

    the air and sits

    simply sits

    on the gunwale

of my lower eye-

    lid in tremble, in,

    (the sun is so

    enormous!)

                    frisson.

Nebula

 

Nebula

 

Someone has stepped on the fallen

wild grape.  There’s something

in the split skin that is

a shucked almost sucked from its shell

a neck and belly of a clam, a

jelly in a quiver

of wind.  While it is simply

a wild grape, riding all these months

on the rising vines of our brief season

I can’t resist making

the resemblance connect.  I’ve seen the wide

exposure of low tide and have

pressed my boot

to the breathing holes in the sand.

It told to me somewhere close and below,

a hinged shell was the twin shield

that held the sea-made

testicle.  It’s amazing that such mirrors

are dug for in the drizzle or fog or

sunburning sun.  That the faces we wait

ages to see & claim & then press

our lips & teeth into

are breathing things really, beneath

a pressure we can only

slice our knives into, divide, weigh

the measure of & split it wide into the sky-provided light.

A bivalve.  A wild

grape.  An eye.  A mouth

that takes each to the tongue

in is raw liquor & tastes

the reckoning

ecstasy of life shaking, shaking.