“Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking together in the same direction.”

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Unconditional Love by Willie Porter

~Always....

Come Back To Me

Come back to me

where daisies feign

to rule little kingdoms,

in the lines of your palms

crossing those bridges

between You and I, my love.

August 18th, 2009

Flower Photography

Storm Over County Road G

I
Beyond the furrows
ravens labored
on the dead ones.
Probed soft fur,
stopped,
looked,
preened blue-oiled tufts,
and drove towards the pines.

They left behind
the last rabbit litter;
sweet blank eyes
would have felt
the first drop.
Blunt on open graves,
under a galvanized sky
the rattling spigot ruptured.

II
We blundered
down the stairs,
soaked as peeper frogs
and sunk into the root cellar,
while centipedes scuttled
and cobwebs hung in our hair.
Here I shushed the children,
listened for the sounds of freight,
symptoms from the east
muted air tasted
like gun metal,
thick and yellow
as quince,
spumous and spreadable.
But no thunderous clap,
or concerto
in thirty-six black notes.

III The first flash
bore into Bertotto's field,
An indelicate bolt of light
splintered the pear tree,
stewed jam ricochetted,
steamed off the cattle gate,
crackled down
drooping wires
at the eaves,
into the telephone
and straight out of
old Mrs. Schulers'
hard muscled hand.

Giver

Nearing Catstye Cam

they quivered,

veined and sooty.

You prodded for ore.

Pushed a thumb

into Red Tarn.

Hollowed out

the softness

of summits,

livered beneath

the evening gloam.

My head tilted back;

a scale of grief,

borne before your

leaving.

You were

such a giver.

Lucid

She has all the telltale signs
of a houseplant.
Don't ask about Zen or Sartre.
Into the wooded glen,
unzips her Levi's
and lets him in.
The mosquitos
have triple
hatched
this year.

His thigh itches.
Thinks about Billy Collins.
"Taking Off Emily Dickenson's Clothes".
A study in detachment
of mother-of-pearl buttons.

Ivory lace folds down
to the floor around
sharp, white ankles.
Each piece of clothing
which fell
from her mouth
was a card laid on the table.

'Fifty two pick-up'.

They are both dreamers,
against the tree.
Eyelids half moons,
He of tulle,
Emily's breath and Collins.
She, weighing the possibilities
of plunging headlong
into the ravine below.

Just one slip from her bad hip,
grasping on to branches
which bend green in her hands.

Loss

"Betrayals during war are childlike compared with our betrayals during peace. New lovers are nervous and tender, but smash everything. For the heart is an organ of fire. For the heart is an organ of fire— I love that. I believe that."

[From "The English Patient. Reading Almásy's note on the Christmas firecracker]

Ebb by Edna St. Vincent Millay

I know what my heart is like
Since your love died:
It is like a hollow ledge
Holding a little pool
Left there by the tide,
A little tepid pool,
Drying inward from the edge.

Morning Without You

Imago

Image from google images

You embrace me in gold chrysalis,
place me hidden,
inside, soft and wet.
Partake the latent;
begetting words
hung from hooks
of silk.

And in your tasting,
I become more than my body
on your tongue.
Immovable, sleepless,
I relinquish my will,
await for the imago.
Whilst you wait for me.

Carol Ann Duffy: First Woman Poet Laureate for Great Britian

Bridge

haiku

"Bridge"

Between the heart-line

and life-line, there is a strength.

You can find me there.

“Late have I loved you…You were within me, but I was outside…You were with me, but I was not with you. You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness…You dispelled my blindness…You touched me, and I burned for your peace.”

~St. Augustine~

"Yet"

I sit down to eat a meal

but I am not hungry.

I am lonely,

so I tread down to the river

and lay on the grass,

feed on the sun

and the lapping water.

The seagulls overhead,

search for something

in wide, white arcs.

I wish I was Whitman

with his stomping leather boots and open shirt,

making love to my own soul on the grass.

So I take off my sandals, try in vain

to avoid duck shit

and feel the tender, giving earth

beneath my soles.

Sieze the grass in my fists

as if it were the wild hair of my lover

and wait.

But I do not love my soul yet.

I look up to the trees,

boughs thrust towards one another.

Bleed in seamless, lilac shadows.

Leaves pursue the rippled water,

consoled by their own reflection.

Out of the mute dark

they labor the whiteness of roots

into a new century.

Allow themselves to be hollowed out

by disease and lovemaking

in order to bear the silence.

Whitman makes me wonder

if he was able to love just one woman.

He craved

everyone and everything

and every portion

as if he were God himself.

My plight roots me here.

But I do love the world,

this grass, my river,

the fat, full ducks

who refuse my bread.

Written by K.

5/29/09

Bare-stript Heart

From "Song of Myself" by Walt Whitman

I believe in you my soul,

the other I am must not abase itself to you,

And you must not be abased to the other.
Loafe with me on the grass,

loose the stop from your throat,

Not words, not music or rhyme I want,

not custom or lecture, not even the best,

Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice.

I mind how once we lay

such a transparent summer morning,

How you settled your head

athwart my hips and gently turn'd over upon me,

And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone,

and plunged your tongue to my bare-stript heart,

And reach'd till you felt my beard,

and reach'd till you held my feet.

Swiftly arose and spread around me

the peace and knowledge

that pass all the argument of the earth,

And I know that the hand of God

is the promise of my own,

And I know that the spirit of God

is the brother of my own,

And that all the men ever born

are also my brothers,

and the women my sisters and lovers,

And that a kelson of the creation is love...

From "Song of Myself" by Walt Whitman

Risk

"There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."

Anais Nin

Exiled In The Midwest

http://www.photoblog.com/kimauman/2008/04/08/north-americas-heartland-a-trip-to-independence-wisconsin.html

Nov 25, 2007
You received my letter today
and I wondered if you opened it
with your opposable thumb
or with a letter knife,
in a civilized manner.

Today, I turned
my palms up for rain,
to quench the thirst in life lines,
ease the drought.
Upon the ceaseless horizon,
the sun flicks lit matches
from east to west,
arsons the stripped fields
with its petty wants.

There are no valleys to trample,
nor Appalachians to curse.
Magic is useless here.
Even the foul breath of doggerels
pumping from the mill stack
dissipates into
this pure air of heaven.

Finding Hiddekel

Written 2007

I might as well have landed

in the dry riverbed of Hiddekel.

There is an epiphany at eleven

that crying cannot save you,

even the gentle persuasion of hands

cannot comfort you,

places where voices will not reach.

Ultimately, gravity becomes your love-mate.

Then you understand fish will drown in air,

floating is only the memory of babies

and for those things

beneath the slick pebbled water.

Written by K.

My Walk

I celebrate myself, and sing myself...
And what I assume you shall assume...

For every atom belonging to me as good as belongs to you.

Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892) Source: Song of Myself

Orpheus' Head Floating in the Wisconsin River

Written April 14th, 2009

I'm drowning my love,
drowsing,
for Selene will sweep me away
on the eddies.
I'm still singing.

But now comes out a
croak, a rasp;
fat juicy bullfrogs,

water bugs
skimming on silver skates
over my face.

While you were living your life,
I was torn to pieces

by the Maenads,

crowned in snakes,

they were thrilled by the power

I handed over.
All because I slumbered

for a moment.
Tired of being good.
Weary of chirping birds,
the adder mocking me,
the deer licking the salt
out of my hand.

Now the eddy
is twisting me towards the bogs.
I am bodiless,

floating past tree stumps,

angel mosses,
by the occasional

bloated corpse,

purling about the sedge.

Heaving towards the duck weed.

I want to know the tenderness of hands.
The flesh over bone,
well formed fingers
and palms soft
over my own wrist,
up to my neck,
where they rest

for a moment.

Seamless,
in lilac shadows,

where I can feel human warmth
emenate from lips.
Then a flash of smile
before the plunge.

You might see me as I am really am.
The very core of me,
the heart of my heart
and not turn away.
But now place two hands
on the back of my neck
and lean me closer.

In Memory of Steven

I slid under the vine,
crawled leaves dressed me
in beryl coats of Christmas,
your hand around my waist,
pressed me hard against clapboard,
and found the fluttering spine,
a hummingbird caught under palm.

My thighs nested amongst the prickers,
spun nests of lichen and spiderwebs,
begged at our feet,
I could hardly hear them at all.

Slip behind dark tents of hair,
shadowed nape of neck,
ruby throated,
concave under fingertips,
head tilted back as if to register
the weight of a grief
before your leaving.

My mother flicked the porch light on,
but in the spreading sun of bare bulb,
fire meted under glass,
you kissed me still.
Hawk Moths circled on one wing,
dancing on slats for the wild burning,
frenzied as black June Bugs
popped against the screen,
unreasonable but brave.

The sides of my tongue
lifted and quivered on
two elbows,
smelling summer rain.
All the unfurnished haunts in
my throat were filled up,
mistakes gulped back by
clouds of condensation,
our breath,
mingled with ivy.

I pulled you back to me while drowning,
but you turned to go,
for the full moon was impatient,
jealous for a covering like mine,
and paced for you outside.

Lake Singing

Unlocked,
Leviathan lies underneath,
huffing into the lip of a glittering bottle,
with resounding bass.
Skated in silver shavings
the descant slivered up
between whittled cricks of marrow.

Crackled,
lucid Bluegills disturbed,
their mud caftans joggle up.
Naked and gliding again
under slick sheets.
Taut,
beyond the bald look-out,
frozen sand in bas relief,
blonded with grass.

Over the ricks of rocks
rusted with iron,
to the covered pontoons
moored at the marina.
The pink-eyed moon
warmed the ice overnight.
Her hands chafed together,
chanting,
ladling libations to the cockcrow;
a sun too arrogant for January,
and too cool for July
must have cajoled
such joyless singing.

The Language of Shade

Under the Pennsylvania Sycamores,
we gathered cadence
as the sun took pictures of our faces,
in flashes between branches.
Our cabin elbowed above the creek,
stilted on clay veins and curly fern.
Slats once painted hurriedly
in noon heat, brushed with army green,
the shade of men.

Remember the raspberry bushes?
Arched canes touched root to tip
and strode to meet us.
Prickled my mother's freckled hands,
I sucked my fat forefingers
and tried to pick as careful as she did.
We picked and bled and laughed, and then
she laid out each berry leaf like a wet dollar.
"See here"? Smooth on the porch railing,
weighted down with stone.
She put her hands on my shoulders.

I was a growing thicket
of admiration and anger.
My breasts were flat fronds,
woody weeds for arms,
ready to make way
through the earth, without regard,
and born to hurt her.
Envious of her grace,
in her shoulders and neck;
long boughs weighted with cares
hidden from me.
I wanted to rest in her cool shade,
but I would not let her know.

The water rolled in a cast iron pan,
as a crow, oiled blue and shimmering
picked berries from the basket.
"We will make tea", she said,
"When the leaves are dry,
under layers of sun."
And we were patient together,
my mother and I,
on the porch until evening came.

For Barrie: Beyond the Fellgate

Photo by Barrie Haughton
Released from this life to the next on January 8th, 2008.
Set to rest and remembered on January 21, 2008, 1:15 pm at Lancaster crematorium.

Beyond the Fellgate,

over yellow Celandines,

your boy legs must be pumping,

arms reaching,

to a Cumbrian sky

the color of Hoegaarden.

Someone calls out

"Neaw Joe, where ar yo beawn so fast?"

but still you run on, smiling

because no one can catch you.

I wonder if you have forgotten

your curries, boiling pots of rice,

sounds of boxing on the television,

steadily clicking computer keys.

Your voice was the hand on my shoulder.

I'm missing you even though

I've never seen your stubbled face

or the way you might have

slowly smiled at some idiocy.

You signed off "Stay Happy"

as if it were a choice.

I know that it must be

now that you are gone.