Feather (Feb. 14, 2005)

Spare me the violins,
the labia of surf
at first summer’s light:
That was all about
beginning a work
which must drive
inland where the
feathered house
is built. Even what
beauty which adorns
these words is just
an isle of beautiful
facets and compelling
cleavage, signalling
that difficulty is
the more worthy
embrace, the thorns
no more savage
than that first kiss.
I’m weary of beaches,
Lord, the incessant
lucent trombones
that fold and crash
at the door & the
long tweezing recedes
signifying nothing.
The Beloved is long
gone from all this,
leaving only her
blue feathered gown
strewn at my feet
like tide at a shore
or plumage of
a seal-queen whose
fins are just
the wetter feathers
of a soul from an
island at the center
of the greater half
of a heart. Can one
ever grow old in
this incessant
sawing in two
the margins of
unsayable bliss?
Certainly I have no
better proof or
knowledge of salt
dreams than these
white shores which
turn, like pages,
into islands of
foam and ebb,
depleted, full-said,
spumed and harrowed
once again, for better
or just for verse.
Do tidals resent
their employ, or
whales their
lonely song?
My audience is
between my ears,
some amening
choir of dead
lovers and drowned
singers, filling up
the rear of Love’s
cathedral at the
bottom of the sea.
Mine is just to
lend one tenor
like a feather
to their winging song --
one sharp ululate
of a deep-diving
& perplex joy,
gathered from
the absence of you,
like a bite of the
most forbidding
ripened fruit by
an unrepentant
insubstantial
soon-to-find-shore
dazed & dazzled boy.