VALEDICTION SPOKEN IN A MELANCHOLY TONE WHILE ALL ALONE AT SUNSET ON A GRASSY KNOLL IN THE PRESENCE OF SEVERAL QUAKING ASPEN TREES FORBIDDING MOURNING

.
.
So much I liked
what you appeared to be.

So much I came to love
the you I seemed to see.

So much for wishing, wanting
what I fancied to be true.

So much for you.
.
.
VALEDICTION ….FORBIDDING MOURNING

NOTES FOR A SONNET

I fall in love with
what cannot be mine

a lilt of violins

mellow moonglow
glimmering over
freshly fallen snow

a bugbit maple leaf
a pale pink columbine

I want to grasp and hold
the glint and shine of
sunlight on the lake

that look I’ve known
in loving eyes

to never let them go
to own and keep them
evermore enshrined.

Not possible.
Impossible.
It cannot be.

Why even now
I fall in love again

with you

impossibly.
.
.
NOTES FOR A SONNET

THE MUSE

The Muse is usually a she
according to art history.
More than once I’ve
served in that capacity.

I’ve also known it as a he
a love, an ardent kind
of sustenance, a boon
to heart and mind.

In the end I think
it is a voice inside
wherever the best
part of me abides.

It is ancient, bardic,
will not be cajoled
or come when called
or do as it is told.

“Do the work,” it says,
“and leave the door ajar.
Do not worry.
I know where you are.”
.
.
THE MUSE

STILL-LIFE WITH PRICKLY PEARS

Two prickly pears in a small bowl
of old majolica posed on a silken stole
ask will you be my valentine…
recall a sweet Venetian barcarole.

Cactus creatures pocked with tiny spines
they stab the skin like quills of porcupine
they do not kill but finely cut the wounds
of will you be my valentine…

Deep red the foreground drapery is strewn
with fruitskins and a plate of macaroons
heart-shaped, in bastard amber light—
eternity is where it’s always afternoon.

The atmosphere floods with gemütlichkeit
a goblet filled and ready to be raised invites
once more, then, will you be my valentine…?
The background says: I think I might.
.
.
STILL-LIFE WITH PRICKLY PEARS

THE STORY OF THE GLORY OF

And then the stars
the holy wafer moon
shone glittery, shone full
(was it for just a blink?)

turned midnight to high noon
a nearly swooning madness of
sweet flight before falling
back to black as ink.

And then began the temporal
succession of plain days
soft-slippered slow processions
into comfort and familiar ways

a preference for what
cuts clean the edges of
unruly fringe, a deference
to the well-oiled, silent hinge.

And then the stars
the holy wafer moon
shone quieter, more faraway,
glittering re-tellers of

the story of the glory of
the thing to which we cling
as we get used to almost
(almost) anything.
.
.
THE STORY OF THE GLORY OF

SONETTO INCREDULO

There used to be a wish for your return
here in my heart, a craving for your smile
so I could bask in it again, a little while
and know the worthiness for which I yearn—

the love you brought, that taught me to unlearn
all anger, sadness, sense of alien exile
and know a place where we together could beguile
from seeming ashes, embers, constancy of burn.

But so much grief has been, and change,
a certain strangeness I believed could never be
has crept into my unbelief and now seems true:

you would not want this world, so rearranged
by time, which once so cruelly stole you from me,
and now, incredibly, is stealing me from you.

.

SONETTO INCREDULO

CREPUSCULE

Name this light a kind of tinting
Between dark and day, a mauve
Interwoven with blue heaven
Hovering over the yew grove.

Always did we keep this hour
Special in our home: your chair,
My chair, sherry on the table
By the gabled window there…

We would look out on new tulips
Then the trumpet vine and phlox
Then nasturtiums and then nothing
But white winter as we talked.

Souls we shared and spoken truly,
Trusting we could lay them bare
In the care of cherished friendship
Which was ours rich and rare…

But a sadness lurks in twilight
Seeks a help to see it through
Wants a lullaby for dying
Needs a loving rendez-vous.

So I shudder now at gloaming,
Gloom and dusk–one and the same,
Same two chairs, one glass for sherry
And an ache without a name.

CREPUSCULE

.

.

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Séadna: ” Irish poetry form. Syllabic. Quatrains of alternating octosyllabic lines with disyllabic endings, and helptasyllabic lines with monosyllabic endings. Lines 2 and 4 rhyme; line 3 rhymes with the stressed word preceding the final word of line 4. There are two cross-rhymes in the second couplet. There is alliteration in each line, the final word of line 4 alliterating with the preceding stressed word. The final syllable of line 1 alliterates with the first stressed word of line 2. The poem (not the stanza) ends with the same first syllable, word, or line with which it begins.” –Turco, Handbook of Poetics

TO BEAR THE BEAMS OF LOVE

“And we are put on earth a little space
that we may learn to bear the beams of love.”
—William Blake

After all, wasn’t it the wanted thing,
this sudden basking in a golden beam,
being one on whom the sun would seem
to rise and set?  For whom whole choirs sing?

In those long hours of heaven’s opening
only to pour upon each cherished dream
bleak rain, or that grey dampening stream
of dullness, dim and witless threatenings—

what was the hope, the hap, so striven for?
Simply to see the end of suffering?  Or was it
something more?  These beams of love burn,

smooth as lasers, loosen the stuck door;
delicate, precarious gold haze fuzzes
the soul—reveals a whole world to unlearn.

.

TO BEAR THE BEAMS OF LOVE

FUTURE PERFECT

We did not plan
aloud or far ahead
knowing how the envy of the gods
(as that of man) is
easily aroused.  We dreaded
ruining our odds.

We did, however, dream
asleep, awake
of moving on to something more–
from milk to cream
dry bread to honey cake
an after better than before.

We meant more life
just down the road.

Until the universe arranged
an otherwise, a knife
to heart, one morning to explode.
You died, and all was changed.

Instead of dreaming now
alone I let life simply be
the in and out of breath.

I greet its beauty, but allow
no wishful thought, no certainty

except, of course, for death.

THE MUSE

The Muse is usually a she
according to art history.
More than once I’ve
served in that capacity.

I’ve also known it as a he
a love, an ardent kind
of sustenance, a boon
to heart and mind.

In the end I think
it is a voice inside
wherever the best
part of me abides.

It is ancient, bardic,
will not be cajoled
or come when called
or do as it is told.

“Do the work,” it says,
“and leave the door ajar.
Do not worry.
I know where you are.”