Poetry From 1990

Mead
62 So. Allen #3
Albany, NY 12208
HYPERLINK mailto:Mead815@yahoo.com mead815@yahoo.com
123soho.com/member/mead

Rock Garden

So many pebbles, such braille on bare thighs
As footsoles found sand, wrinkles welling
Under, purple &; blue, the lagoon
These stones surround?

It was Summer then, gentle with warmth:
Boulder blurs, the rigid crags softened,
Reflective amid drops?

How less threatening they seemed
Taking the moonlight as a veil-----
Daily I have meditated on such irrefutable forms,
The faceless slabs that erosion gave
A suggestion of limbs to
As if to hold a head.

A neck can support baskets,
But with them it was shoulders I pictured
Carved in their own slopes-----

Does the sky weigh too much?

One afternoon in some secret region
I felt you were joined to those rocks.
Bearing a great mass, your eyes were full
Of marble flecks &; your hands molded sky
As if rocks might spring from your fingers.

You held quite a lot:
Ivy, moss, hirsute on the back, while nude
Palms choreographed stillness.
I believed that sound was a cove
Your wrists locked in.

They were always so strong &; loveable,
Even if stark. In them I hoped to become
A dove white cloud ladled by a touch
Which is the only touch.

Then it turned colder. The obsidian tapped
Its deepest roots. You spoke of jogging &; began
Naming the paths: igneous, sedimentary.

I held back everything even while wrapping
Spirit as a shawl about you.

Tonight I slept
Between crevices for a spell then woke to find
A detached rose perfectly preserved
By a thin frost coat.

The stones looked on almost friendly-like
As I cast it towards the water: blue over purple

&; those silhouettes of foam?