About Light

Everything about light
concerns me.
Light before dawn,
before color.
The first light
that creeps onto
the mattress ticking.

---

Sunset, Route 106

Pure uncanny blue,
not the blue of cloudless day,
but lustrous lined,
framed with salmon pink.

To know it is no driven work
of plan or mind,
but freely given, as rain or snow.

This love laid bare,
this hint of something more.

---

While We Talked

While we talked, it grew dark,
the phone lit by a single lamp.

Up and down the street
house lights came on,

TVs tuned to the weather,
the news. . . .

Above a cover of broken cloud,
the cup of night fills.

---

October Poem

The day goes
into golden afternoon,
deep ocher afternoon
slant with shadow,
like a woman unwinding
her hair.

Elemental, silver drain
of color,
of crayon drawn and wash blue
tinctured enemy of peace;
of picture pink and blood red
ivory horn, iron,
and ultimate disuse.

Bare are her limbs,
and bare are her dreams
if dreams be good.

Oh, she goes, the day
as to a lover,
letting her hair upbraid
her innocence
down backs of trees
that follow to her rest.

---

Night-Leaning Woman

Leaning in the moonlight,
in the moon-lit window,

she casts shadows down,
listening to a sound

past the cut-out trees.
Hands in the folds

of the parted drapes,
eyes upon the ground.

The slender form,
shadowed back and hair,

head thrust slightly forward
beyond shoulders.

Into the shadowed night,
shadows chasing round

the bell-like tone,
one note floating there.

---

O Risen Moon

Some said of cheese,
some of silver . . .

those who brought bits home,
of stone and dust.

Moon of long vagaries,
O risen Moon.

Full tonight, round,
ragged with cloud,

peeking with troubled face
over rooftops

a warm summer's evening,
O cold and barren moon.

Distant, unconcerned,
a still bell

the color of old iron
loud with lost ringing.

Like a sound
a train leaves on the rail.