She is What I Sidhe (Oct. 2004)

My longing is an abbey
scribe who’s scratching
down the old tales,
recording for great
God above the
those one thousand
nights she sashayed
off opening all
the doors inside.

My longing is that
drifting monk
on wintry seas
who trusts his God
to compass
his frail boat
to the next shore
of trials and wonders
where she is near
yet further to the
rear of the sea’s
colossal wash.

My longing is the well
which offers tribute
to her so far below
and oracles her
mythic plunge,
drinking deep
her blue derange,
carrying from
far the news I
need most to hear
on any given day.

Every poem sights
her somewhere in
the day’s tableaux
-- in my wife’s
first-waking smile or
in some fleeting
face in traffic, on
TV or the
radio where
sirens and
divas tide --
or further in,
finning the depths
of daydream
or a text. A poem
is that sudden gush
of ache and wonder
praising all she is
in bells of
towering lack.

Sometimes she
is Eve and sometimes
Helen, a pure maternal
or that poured nocturnal
too wild for any
cup I’ve drained. I’ve
come to guess that
her face and shape accords
with what my longing
bids me see, as if
she disclosed some
next or further reach
of my heart’s long
walk on a beach
of white desire.

All my loves have
one thing in common --
me -- or, more precisely,
my longing’s high
cathedral shape
within the borders
of my life, its ringing
bells smashing clabbers
hot steel against
massive walls of
singing bronze,
pealing my need to
praise her names
and within them mine.

What is every
quest and grail
but another romance
for the stacks,
one more exempla
of the ten thousand
ways her eyes shined
back the face I
was searching for, the
heat in her eyes
my own, risen sunlike
from blue seas?

I’’ll never have
enough nib and
squid-squirt and
bleached parchment
to finish all the
tales that winged
angel of the heart
has bid me write;
it defies all the
aching shorelines
of this art, whispering
MORE inside each
crashing way
that she and
I have met.
Again and again
and again that
litany of champagne
foam froths the wake
of smash and boom,
a spill of failing
bubbles ebbing to a hiss.

Listen close, I hear
that salty angel croon.

How about a kiss--