After seeing Kipling’s Vermont Naulakha

After seeing Kipling’s Vermont Naulakha

“What is this," said the leopard,

"that is so 'sclusively dark,

and yet so full of little pieces of light?” 

― Rudyard Kipling, Just So Stories

Yes, of course—it is something

I would do: drive clean

through to Vermont to see

the rhododendron blossom

open and watch Rudyard Kipling’s

Naulakha, his ship

of a house crest the hill

like its coming up from the bottom

of the tallest wave

and it made it, intact, sound

as it is.  And those

pink or white domes that have

yet to expose themselves there,

early or late maybe, so don’t

they remind me, some of the ones

that are still velvet cinched,

(like an offstage curtain in the grip

of the star of the show)

of the stupas in Angkor Wat.

I wonder if Kipling saw, maybe

even walked there, and if he drew

a similar conclusion—I bet

he’d’ve loved looking up

through to the shimmer and blur

and pluck it like one of his fruit

from the trees he'd planted

down the road, and,

not quite ripe, let it come to rest

on his desk.  Maybe, seeing it,

he’d take his time climbing

to wake in the faces placed

pace by pace and say ‘My

Josephine, my Josephine, she

would have loved to see…’

and here a Vishnu and here

a Buddha, an eye to ride by

on the tigers and the vipers

and once arriving, settle into

the lid of the fiercest of the gods

and sleep on his stone

lip, reaching up to touch

the point of his nose, or one

of his eight arms, or count

all the fingers, and imagine them all

folded like a rhododendron

on a cold Vermont morning

holding off until the sun comes up,

holding off until something

of Kipling is dusted up

from the desk he sat and patted

the head and cheek of his daughter

and looked out the window

and told her a story just so,

just like she asked him to. 

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.