The Unofficial Record

1.
Black stars.
White water.
Beef and baby food:
Under the ice, sea monsters:
In your mouth
I hear them bolt
and gnash their prey.
The mouth and the sea.

2.
Weary, almond-fed,
and I can hardly care if the flitting wings
are bats or sparrows.

If I opened my palms
I wonder:
would the winged creatures
unfold into the air?

3.
A land and law of spectacular limits.
And for the myths of the wanderers and
for the few who plunder on
against all will and impulse,
for those who harbor no ambitions
but the most clean and eruptive:
my back is bent in mere half belief
as occult little black fish
needle each other in the silver starlight.

We would have grown old,
Soothed by the creek's movements
as the sand made its long crawl underneath from the
mountains to the forest and back, perhaps.
A widening groove.

We would have held hands here.
We would have read the bones of the forest:
the chattering skull of the fisher cat
who terrorized the children
now perilously fragile among the leaves.

The eyes of the fisher cat
alive would turn you to stone.

The creek can brook no return course
in the smaller sense.
Only the world knows the way back.

4.
And where is the lost fire of the constellations?

August and simple sounds:
uncompounded:
trains and wind.
Passing sounds.

5.
We dreamed of going to Paris
we dreamed of having a daughter,
of getting out of debt:
we dreamed your son would one day
be an artist.
We dreamed we'd own a houseboat
and live among the feeding pelicans at dusk.

You hoped someday to travel.

Another match for another kindling word.

The moon will not burst into
lightning and the sun
will not rise up
in miniature
out from the morning glories.

Nots and dreaming nots.

Some cradled aspirations
now bawl like waylaid babies
like sidewalk stoves
kicked into the riverbed.

6.
And for a moment, we forgot that the world is not just
feel and thrill and
annoyance.

The mind can frame events,
make sense of them
in ways subtle or clumsy.
Thought is key and keystone.

The wind is a thought
and it not only carries birds
but birdsongs!

What hopes
that seem
gift and punishment;
what hopes are beyond hope
and what cleans its paws,
blind at the water's edge?

7.
There are raids and freak winds.

We are not here
to ally ourselves against the burdens of the world.

We are not here
as antagonists.

There are aims.
There is a justice.

This, at times
a crippling expectation.

8.
There are rings of water
lazily flowing in green spaces.

A clear mind is a ring and a stone.

She blinks slowly
so you can see her eyes change color
in the light.
Unhurried dragonflies linger and form
bracelets and barrettes.
The long embraces before sleep
linger still.

And if we can hold to
memories of holding to,
and if we can't, and here
all is lost in the moods of the wood.

Some lost love, some childhood.
The red brick mart sells wine until nine,
and night crawlers for the early morning.

9.
It took 10,000 years
to produce these teenage dreams.

The great green heaven!

The deep heaven,
deeper than the wake of a
sleeping teenage dream.

10.
The purple hills roll on.

Among freshly laundered sheets
the nine tailed fox
chips her tooth eating rocks;
the other foxes went away
and she is bored.

11.
On the waxy field
of the skin of a grape
worms push through the drum;
soundlessly, they beat the skin.

Mallet headed worms,
and words countless,
magnifying not sound but sorrow,
dimming sorrow,
spreading sorrow
they consume sorrow and
they spread sorrow.

The way the strings of her voice
vibrate, drunk or flushed
with love:
this is the way the rains fall.

12.
The sundial of Occam
Demon cynical Occam
the gentle waters of smiling thought
the gentle turnings
of a lavender
wing as heat
lifts falcons up
above the mice.

13.
Gold:
the ring and the heart.

Symbols from a child's chest
golden springs
and golden dogs
golden windings
touching, cog to cog
turning cog to cog.

The long rains have ended.
We open like morning glories.

14.
The Northern Frost tracked her blood-soaked trail,
bells on his belt
and she turned to run.
Her hand touched the doorknob,
it's toothed metal, its grin
and the Northern Frost, laughing,
crashed through her shoulders and into the house.

The Northern Rain rose to her neck.
She reached for bird bones and a star
or a branch, or a skeletal hand,
some shadow among the shadows of the skies and trees and night
or the hand of tough hearted chance.

Her cheek scraped on the rock
and the blood charted the waters,
black silk in black petals.

15.
Lift your skirt.
The drought demands it.
Lift your skirt
for my hands and my heart.

Some want stillness
and some want motion.
Stillness is an echo of death
or death itself
or autumn and the end.

Our fingers touch
and our lips and
our legs, half in lamplight.

16.
The sun is out.

It bans all chattering ghosts from my side.

The sun won't fathom a shade.
We could have kissed,
eyes squinting
under this sun's even warmth.

We could have stared at kites
run streaming down to eye-wide children.

We could have waited at
the crosswalk, giggling.

17.
The night crawlers
struggling against storms
surrender and become bitter men.

Under the soil,
they slurp against the glacial remains
of granite and mica.

The night crawlers carve out pockets
of precious stones.
The stones are passed through
dim-heard tunnels until
they drop ever distant into the blue snow
at the earth's core.

Snow flecked by dragonflies,
their wings agitate the air
and the storms fall and the storms rise.

18.
Against jokes and hand holding
old signs
these bits that spin
as they float on the surface,
downstream,
and only noted in reflection--
in the small spaces underneath the fallen leaves.

Pan has dashed his bottle on the rock.

The human history of drunken wisdom
is over --
we bow our heads.
We smile.

No words take.
She is gone.
And even willows snap
and even willows take root
in waves upon the grey fields.

19.
I've had dreams of clocks
eaten by night-eyed grizzlies, clocks like salmon,
skeletal to the spawning grounds,
guts and bolts and rumbling down the weeds
into a distant stream.

20.
Your two eyes,
two moons.

Your hands lifted by dragonflies
their wings synchronous and invisible.

The stars grow red in their heat.

You open your mouth to speak
the secret words of us all.

It is time to be holy;
it is time to sweep the floors.

Two eyes, two moons.
Your face is a shadow and the night is a shadow.
These secret words:
the shadows are a wind
that passes over the highways
and the moon
and the beating wings.