Give me a windbreak—
I can’t stand
the landscape—
I wake in the night
from the wind.
Anything, even
forlorn eucalyptus
to send down showers
of thin, fish-shaped leaves.
The scent
I realize I miss
when I return
to this wide-open,
sun-broken place
we lived.
I found you nude, rilassante
in a loosely painted mural
in a side room
in this faded hotel.
I knew you at once
from photographs in books
years back
when you and your painter friend
wrote long letters home
scrawled with flowers
and lizards
and Italian adjectives
d'amore.
And now, like you
in the breakfast room
I drink juice
and my glass
through lace
reflects sea light
in waves—
all anomalous diamonds
on my hands
and the … Continue Reading ››
Tables stacked three high—
from the ruin
of our rooms
each table
a place to forget
cooling tea,
half-eaten
See’s candies—
the heating vents
hot and strong
all winter
lift the drawings
taped to the wall—
lift and settle,
lift again—
the portrait of you,
of me,
two long lines
scratched out
by our baby son.
A classical fortress
in stone
she owns
a host
of romantic traits—
her nose
in profile aquiline,
an old and careful ship
but upside down—
she dashes orders off
without fuss,
“finds fault
without heart.”
Embroidered with tigers!
Lined satin-red
and the man
in the photograph
wears them
with ease—
I want a paintbrush
in hand
and his same
sun-squint
and spilt drinks
and short nights
spent on deck—
that hair,
those hands,
those sea-spangled,
horn-rimmed spectacles
he wears honestly,
to better see.
Enormous boulder in Itoshima
you stand recently freed
in your circle of spiritual space
in your forest of bamboo trees.
Did you sense the purple-colored cloud
above her head
when Empress Jingu visited
in the year two hundred one?
Can you feel today each bow,
each arm spread wide,
each breath held specially,
released specially
for you? Back home
where no great stone
lives close
we feel you still.
Once Holy
Roman Empire,
long opulent,
now spent—
these Ruins
of the Baths
of Antoninus
sun-bathe
beaten soft
by centuries
of sun and wind and rain.
A bird’s nest
high in an arch
and the sound
of waves—
some signs of life remain
in this thermae Āfricae
in this lost country
of Carthage
deep set
by the sea.
Push off the wall
and the water
pulls me long—
Where’s my daughter?
Oh asleep.
And somehow
I forgot her
in this green light
so late. Summer
and the dark sky
presses hotter
on the surface
of this pool
though my face
as I lift it wet
feels cool again
and I plunge
straight forward—
sleek the length,
soft and streaky
as a comet.
When Venus
born from foam
fully grown
steps to the sand
sun-hot
she stops—
a step back
into surf
and again
the green waves surge
and a rose scent
sweeps against
her skin
still wet
and a clamshell
cream and pink
curves up again
from the sea
to tenderly cup
her feet.
