LOOKING BEHIND
Hidden,
in speculative folds, disembodied
by a sharp
spirituality, a rosiness
cut
short by a sudden
flash,
of white in the dark,
from a birch.
---------------------------------
MEMORY OF HOME
Town center, beyond
the tattered bridge
and above the littered
railroad stop;
Rhododendrons, tulips, and roses ring;
the lilacs fling
their leaves and long
for Russian hills,
and southern sour gum trees
or dovewood, pink among boughs
of ghostly birch reply,
murmuring in the mind like rain.
Here in the shutting
darkness
complexities unwind
in mauve stretches of sky.
------------------------------------------------------------
LINES
broken,
are perfect, pauses
after each cluster, not
what I have written, what
you see makes
me smile, earliest
oriental
rituals fissuring
bones of forgotten
beasts,
drawing
the dim
future from tattered
patterns........
