A Love Poem

Dearest Haas,
The dream again, last night—
on your birthday—a full November moon
over Port Townsend.  You gone.
The same ramshackle house with
too many open windows ,
a corrugated tin roof against a dry cliff,
no roof at all, really—open to the heavens
and that eerie feeling—a mountain lion
stalking close.  You know the fear.
When I turned to the window
suddenly it was there.  Huge, whirling
figure eights brushing heavily against me.
Its pungent breath surprisingly pleasing. 
Then all at once, you were standing there,
beautiful—not unlike Housman’s young athlete
before the race—but thinner, calm,
dark eyes burning.  The wild animal—who knows?
somehow gone.  With it, sudden death
at least for the moment.  We walked to
south-facing porch filled with tree branches and
broken things, an earth tremor had shattered all—
your Italian vase—hand-painted
porcelain. You kneeled to show me
what could be salvaged, then stood,
your linen shirt damp, sleeves rolled up, 
you grabbed me with unaccountable love—
dark curly hair falling into your eyes—
and covered my face with an avalanche of kisses.
A crushing last embrace. And because I held on,
it turned into a waking dream.
But the terrible morning light was
unrelenting—.  Bereft,  khay—
dearest brother,  I had to let you go.

khay: Arabic for “brother”

Making Baqlawa    

hope is the hardest love we carry
Jane Hirshfield

You do this for your grown daughter,
for her friends up-country Maui,
for your doctor who for years has culled
silence into an exquisite voice,

cold sunlight on marble.
Now a kind of ritual,
but a small thing.
For your mother and grandmother,

gone.  For the dead you never knew—
the ones lost in the terror of
the streets of Beirut or
in the shimmering desert,

all who savored the sweetness, 
the hint of rosewater in the syrup.
The open sky, trees glowing with dark light.
Though you no longer prepare the filo yourself

the old way, mixing flour and egg whites,
stretching it with your fingers
long into the night, circling the table,
draping it paper thin over the edges—

white as a girl’s organdy dress.
Nor do you shell walnuts,
work the mallet, breaking them
into small pieces one at a time.

It’s so easy these days with
frozen filo and a food processor—
but still a matter of intention,
a small thing you do alone in your kitchen.

So you clarify the butter,
paint the leaves, layer after layer,
spoon in the rich filling,
layer again, cut into diamonds.

Lightly browned, you drizzle webs of
syrup over it, webs of amber—
stop to remember
your mother saying in Arabic:

Anywhere in the villages, a stranger
would come to your door,
you would invite him in, and after
three days, you would ask his name.

Suddenly you look up from your work
to the lanai doors thrown wide open
to the world.  You hear the birds
delirious in the trees, nesting so close,

a pair of dark-crested bulbuls
come all the way from India.  And you are again
grateful that the impartial gods allow such
small pleasures even in the hardest times.