Here's more strange stuff that nobody will understand, from Autumn Door. (I re-post this in order to rid my blog of what appears to have been a spam comment, which has showed up on several poetry blogs. Have to figure out comment moderating, I guess. My apologies to Andrew Shields, who sent an authentic comment to the same post.)

9

 
The murmur of the tree, the consolation
of the air.  When you've finished all your assignments,
after the last test.  It rustles through the tents
of Abraham (your dream)... the Shekinah, the One. 

 
I too am a jealous guy – I too have a heart
(corrupt desperado).  Heap dust on your brow,
then, princely one – no time like now
for self-abasement, snarls the shopping-cart

 
lady, she of Lebanon cedars, whose twin
towers (swelling roses in her blouse) navigate
the raging, reckless nations.  Her familiar fate.
Deliver us (Virgin, Saena Julia) from our vapid sin.

 
A flowerpot fashioned on the fastest wheel
in the West or on the Nile goes into the kiln
for the kill – by kinfolk driven (everyone
wondering, Everyman).  Your Achilles, heel.

 
When you lose your job.  When the air
feels clammy, absent.  When you lean your head back
and peer up toward pinpoints in the black night,
on the prairie, on the steppe.  Cold, bare.

 
At the last moment.  At the midnight hour.
Up (down).  To you (alone).
Keening wind.  Frozen
lake.  Weeping willow.  Empty tower.

 
So shape up your conjecture (17-mile donut-
loop under the Alps) – Kaluza-Klein
gluino squarks, or sleptons for the winos in
dark matter horns (Swiss chocolate, Big Bang).

 
The cosmos whispered in a willow branch.
It was the timbre of your crooning voice,
compagnevole Jonah-tree – sweetness
in the creaking of a rusted latch.

 
As every wheel reiterates itself
so I rekindle your itinerant ellipse.
Vagrant heart... feminine apocalypse...
your potter's clay my zed, aleph.