GROTTO OF THE GNOSTIC ANGEL

The past comes to an end

reversing itself,

as we restore the future,

contriving to salvage

its garden

of ornate resemblance

We had pushed our memories

through cities,

trusting to find a sky

that flattened land for grasses

the unadorned could plow.

The heat was heavy with water

and the stones nudged into place glistened

alongside bits of chinaware and colored glass

travelled to set up house

(and house again)

wherein we recognized

our persons re-assembled

The two who conspired

to hold each other off

yield as one, oafish,

unable to stand upright

without a hand to help

Wings, no less unlikely,

catch the eye, averted

from the guardian’s

remote and placid gaze

above the whirlwind

of parents

driving youth back

to the old country

grandparents remembered 

We go back with trowels 

and wheelbarrows

to revive the grotto

with forms of promise

fulfilled and then abandoned

and hues of restlessness

inimical to settlement

The angel stays implacable,

as if a figurehead at sea

TWO HEARTS

I took two hearts for birds.

The first, a silver fledgling

in the landscape’s one tree

polished the sky

when it took wing,

and in its place,

a brilliant sun

declined to nest.

Years ran down feelings,

as if the brooding

had not hatched.

The light came on

one night in the kitchen’s dark

when I opened the refrigerator,

which was empty,

except for the frozen raven,

a past century's relic

on its Wedgwood platter.

As I reached in

to pick it up,

the bird’s skin turned translucent

and I could see the heart

inside was pumping.

My hands went right into the bird

and I took up the heart,

which was good-sized,

lifting it out

with a freedom's intention.

I am holding the heart

in my hands

and it is spilling blood

onto the floor.

The tenderness I feel

mixes with yearning.

I find the redness

of its aeration flattering,

and I don’t want to get

myself in trouble,

taking back

what had belonged to me. 

LOCK-DOWN

  “Escape did not promise anything worthwhile.”

                                                    - Chekhov

The rickety door opens out

from a dark room

onto a screened porch,

as far as one can go

(without violence)

in the faltering make-up 

of sense. 

Past low sweeping pine boughs,

a view of the uncut meadow -

birds prepare

in faded light

for lock-down.

The bent figure of an aged woman

he had once seen buried

continues her ceaseless rooting.