Embers
I was a great collaborator with
wartime cigarettes, an artist
with the conical scream-sighs
of life under bombardment.
I trust you more under
a broken street lamp, under
a shattered sky space,
where time stills
Than I ever did at dinner
tables pushed together on
sidewalks where some grand
conspiracy was hatched beneath
Breath you took in so
easily, not as now with
cracked plaster, mulched brick,
petroleum haze.
A Note for Fathers
You dwell in memory:
blazing, soot-smoke, refined flame,
shifting, yet stone-hard,
with weights unbound.
There are scarce words
I would have written,
amongst polish concrete monuments,
amongst pine-willow shade,
had I the blood that now courses,
breath that now fills,
webs of infinite electric complexity
that pour themselves onto paper,
now.
Then I was bereft of all,
shivering for the slight,
tender touch of idle hands,
offering frozen comfort,
knowing some other truth.
In the chisel marks,
you persist
doing now no damage,
knowing now no strife,
knowing not how
grass, water, time,
can move boulders –
do not dull wounds.
