Singing Kaddish for Anna

(in memory of my mother, dedicated to my father)

    

All night long, my bedroom glowed
golden with the light of street lamps
through opened window blinds,
through the sash I’d cracked
to let the cool night air flow in
and the deep breathes of sorrow out.
All night long wasted on sleep
that wouldn’t come whilst listening
to thoughts that couldn’t stem
the stream of time into a river
greater than mine . . . A half-state
neither here nor there, beyond
the great windowed wall that once
sieved our lives into moments,
vignettes from the theatre of us,
that history only now defines.
All night confined to one such moment,
hearing the whimpers of the dog
whose fall into sleep has sent him
into a run across imagined fields;
no one else here to sing
the lullabies you once carried
like water: fluid even
within confines of a melody
I can’t quite remember
but don’t want to forget.


     

KS

“I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”

     — Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz.

We grow wise only

too late to save ourselves

from death – a river

coursing quickly over

stones – the runner jumping

at the gun – a gazelle

whose flight is the breeze

in the tall grass.  We grow

wise only too late

to grow new spots the wile

those we have will kill.

       
     
     
The increasingly archaic word "wile", meaning an enticement or skillful deceit, is intentionally used in the place of a more common English, "while".

The Long-distance Swimmer

I placed an earthen jar on the Kentish coast,
not far from our marital home.  I waited whilst
its breath escaped, and, watched
as the sea and the sand rushed in.
It aped such human sounds as moaning
cries as over washed the wind.
Then I laid me down beside my love, beneath
the sun as the surf in eddied alcoves swirled
and after swam alone, toward the dark, distant shore.
    

Incantum Dei

a final memory:     the boy
on the black sand beach
thin     lean and long     climbing
naked over a black boulder
washed in white foam
that day my desire facing
the sea      not at an end
though it might have been
spoiled with the rush of tides