A Cargo of Green Hearts
~POEMS~
at last it rained.
the clouds spread their blue, blue eyelids. too long we embraced the sun the round yellow arms the dusty fingertips for decades it seems the heat we believed was everything imagining in this bottomless desert god spoke through a dry mouth whispered rasped through dead leaves. then, a drop. a drop. and our tongues extended alarmingly like the hands of starving children and another and another and this, the story of how our eyes were filled how the fish learned to breathe without air so lovely their gills dancing like Chinese fans. listen, it is true our third eye is made of water a parting gift to us from the horseshoe crab, wise old boatman of the sea back when we traded leg for fin and wandered mad and foolish across the earth troubling things troubling ourselves but still it is water, still that lubricates the kiss it is water still in the heart's thumping drum it is water that carries the salt of our tears to the sea where it prays where it reclines buoyantly where it sleeps like a calmed god. I am looking for room to die honorably
August, a girl who held my hand at last, so lovingly a bird that I do not know the name of visited me at night I feel the highways contract like muscle for that final leap see, if you kiss me here while the days are still so long, it will have to stop we will have to feel our way through the night eventually someone's night the things we could do there leaves will fall but I will wear my tenderness like a glove until the palms wear out I think the bears are dreaming of dreaming the nights feel that heavy now the sun wept purple tears someone explain this to me, how to reach out when everything is trying so hard to let go I am so ripe I could be cut in two and sold whole twice these thoughts and others have begun to trouble me please turn me, please point me home so, I am waiting for fall. I have touched
tenderness on this earth, have bowed to it like a blackened lover forehead dropped forward to the feet of a saint. have cut off my feathers and mailed them south. I cannot fly but still can sing. the seas are made of tears. if I stop crying I cannot blame the desert for being dry. each leaf prepares to die like a warrior painted in blood. a cloud has a cold name scratched on its back. kisses replay themselves backward, lips disappearing like Octobered watermelons. I have been carrying the story of a bear through this shivasana. if all goes well, I will awake riding the bear. if not the bear will eat me and winter will never stop. if you do not believe me think hard about what melts ice, what wakes the dead. Lazarus awoke to the touch of something he did not believe. a sliver pulled from his heart. Shiva awoke when death squatted on him and became life. so we recognize love in the thinnest of seasons by the narrow by the thin. we light fires. when our lover touches us on the shoulder we shiver, but not of the cold . |
Poetry LogPoems are posted here when I'm ready to share them. I often don't title my poems. The date you see above the poem may be the date it was posted here and not necessarily the date it was created. To see more, click on the Archives below. Archives
January 2020
CategoriesUnless otherwise noted, all content ©Paul-William Gagnon, Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-NoDerivs license.
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