2 New Poems

Two Dolphins, Swimming

Shining,

the carvings of kerosene on Trebant-sharp

lime green paint job, some cobblestone side-street

in some town whose names eludes English tongue shapes,

skin slipping beneath canal water and noon-day shadows.

I took deep a breath of country air.

Staying,

the feel of clean sheets and hanging portraits of Christ,

five days' diet of wheat beer and dime-store pastry,

with light bending in ice-mended glasses,

in powder gates and tourist camera stops.

I look at the castle wall as swaying in double-time.

Swimming,

the coats of grey-black in ocean print,

dip-diving as bauble-brooks with heart patter tune,

so unlike the facades of spraypaint steel,

of vicious rusts calling us back again.

I bit my tongue in crowds, in private too.

Time Of Your Life

At fifteen,

with wicker torch of youth burned bright in some,

but not you as smothered ash, you as soaked kindling,

held with the breath of angels wished to bed,

you were something to sneer and bereave, separately.

At twenty-two,

with winter jackets and pocketed rail passes,

rushing to get somewhere you'd read in storybooks,

away from that old gospel's temperance of being,

you were left with finding only wicked mirrors in shot glass.

At thirty,

with the edge of blacktop falling behind memory's stage curtain,

promises made, broken as bottles in the green grocer bin

when all wanted was a shared light to hold,

you will be the same as broken ever, accordion wheeze.