Nothing of you is small to me — not the ground
each step of yours has claimed, nor the wide sky
wheeling above your head, nor the slow air
that fills your lungs, nor that stubborn vast heart
of yours, beating its cold and steady measure.
No, I loved your mind first, and burn for it last.
breathing the sky
hems up—stepping into streams
the sky breathing us
When I was a child, a bookshelf
was the way to hush my mouth.
Beautiful beams of literature in light
from that bookshelf bound the tongue
and sent me off to study peppery pages
covered in smudges of satiny dust.
Deacons declaimed our destiny dust,
but I’d found the oak bookshelf.
Scribes transcribed yellowing pages,
leafy rolls herded from its mouth,
made to tamp the quibbling tongue
that would thwart our travels to the light.
Come careful light,
born at the dawn and clearing of dust—
a mirror clarion-made by the tongue—
my heart—and murmurs from the bookshelf—
the open and giving mouth
of so many books and pages—
whether in tales of knights and pages
seizing the cup of Christ’s light,
or delving dagger deep into Grendel’s mouth,
steeped in blank verse and dust
on Seamus Heaney’s bookshelf.
Then the tongue—
a fiery tongue
speaking crinkle pages
catalogued bizarre on a bookshelf,
lit by a simple wavering light
lit by candle illumining dust
falling from the roof of its mouth.
I love you Uncle Whitman! Mouth
happy words of your multitudes! Tongue—
hear us Shakespeare! No! Dust
will not claim Plath or Millay! Pages
of Chaucer, plates of Blake’s light
and shadow’ll not fade from my bookshelf!
And on your bookshelf, my simple mouth,
and Light-American from my tongue.
Our best pages will not fall to dust.
Time to come clean with you
While I didn’t put ink to paper
I used a laptop instead
freshening up an ancient sin
but black-letter sin it is
I hope you forgive me
It was about her
spontaneous like her love
My sins are many
which you know
though I never appealed to you
for those
Just this
Ink to paper
light on laptop
like skin
without which I bleed
like air
without which I gasp
No excuse I know
But it was about her
Can’t that merit forgiveness
this once
and then again
warm weight of
