from Grassblade Light:


31

Those flowerets burst forth and sheathe the axle
of the cherry tree. My gnomon-body spun
like a humming halcyon in a Sperry-
gyro wind to pinnacle - can Henry write it?

Only puffed and drifting, down toward the couch
of clay, shrouded, in April rain. Downward,
fluted. . . a rivulet, a sod
ocarina faucet, a floating pouch

full of raven-chalk. Staring into the blue
toward the far-off buzz - a copper ovenbird
or piepan violin - some Nahua brouhaha -
hovered and soared where time came through

a gap in the mountain - teeth bucked
down a ravine at a red moonlit sundog
- mirage shimmering deep - haggard
crux or suffering middle C caw caw

way way the wake of your black line looped
across both wings down the divide (Michal-
Melchizedek) as a melancholy, milky
melody for two palms groped

toward an octave - then contracted to
arpeggio one trilling escapade and
so solder together the broken
glittering continuum once more

where a black round stone springs open
and squares the garden with a living
Lazarus grassblade, quivering
in the cold. Thighbones, my darling

leached from the Santa Rosa Canyon
after 13,000 years - a J-cub's angle
written all over the chest of Guadalupe
lifted from the axis of the earth to say: the sun.

4.15.99