Now that you have caught sight
of the other side of darkness
the invisible side
so that you can tell
it is rising
first thing in the morning
and know it is there
all through the day

another sky
clear and unseen
has begun to loom
in your words
and another light is growing
out of their shadows
you can hear it

now you will be able
to envisage beyond
any words of mine
the color of these leaves
that you never saw
awake above the still valley
in the small hours
under the moon
three nights past the full

you know there was never
a name for that color

I shall think of you as my ventriloquist,
lying under the cedar trees. Your lips
unreadable, my mouth daydreaming:
journey, draining, geranium.
My head heavy more with rhymes than sleep,
resting on your arm, near the shadow’s edge.
The fragrance of wood neither green
nor brown, but shallow blue.
Your compliments lodged in me
like harvest mice nesting under leaves,
foxgloves at our feet, the north winds singing.
My ear as dumb as corn and too far gone,
to catch your heart closing like a gate behind me.

I had jumped off the edge, and then, at the very last moment, something reached out and caught me in midair. That something is what I define as love. It is the one thing that can stop a man from falling, powerful enough to negate the laws of gravity.

You did not see mine, on the first night we met.
You were occupied, putting your hand
Through my window, not feeling the pain,
Bleeding your wrist on invisible shards
As you opened the frame just a crack for some air,
Letting autumn leaves in from the fingers of trees.
At some point, we made love, or a bungled attempt.
By the morning, your blood had congealed.

Wounded and practical, no broken bird,
You tried often to show me how two falling leaves
Might collide in the rain, on a current, and sail
As one leaf. In the end, winter rattled us loose.
Now and then, subtle scars raise a sign on my skin
That you left more in me than I ever let on.

Who gives his heart away too easily must have a heart
under his heart.
—James Richardson

The heart under your heart
is not the one you share
so readily so full of pleasantry
& tenderness
it is a single blackberry
at the heart of a bramble
or else some larger fruit
heavy the size of a fist
it is full of things
you have never shared with me
broken engagements bruises
& baking dishes
the scars on top of scars
of sixteen thousand pinpricks
the melody you want so much to carry
& always fear black fear
or so I imagine you have never shown me
& how could I expect you to
I also have a heart beneath my heart
perhaps you have seen or guessed
it is a beach at night
where the waves lap & the wind hisses
over a bank of thin
translucent orange & yellow jingle shells
on the far side of the harbor
the lighthouse beacon
shivers across the black water
& someone stands there waiting

She moved nearer, leaned her shoulder against me — and we were one, and something flowed from her into me, and I knew: this is how it must be. I knew it with every nerve, and every hair, every heartbeat, so sweet it verged on pain. And what joy to submit to this ‘must’. A piece of iron must feel such joy as it submits to the precise, inevitable law that draws it to a magnet. Or a stone, thrown up, hesitating a moment, then plunging headlong back to earth. Or a man, after the final agony, taking a last deep breath — and dying.

In August we carried the old horsehair mattress
to the back porch
and slept with our children in a row.
The wind came up the mountain into the orchard
telling me something:
saying something urgent.
I was happy.
The green apples fell on the sloping roof
and rattled down.
The wind was shaking me all night Long,
shaking me in my sleep
like a definition of love,
saying, this is the moment,
here, now.