ARCHEOLOGY

Alone people possess an emptiness
that's unapproachable, a dry color
that sounds as ocean sounds, as shallow roar,
flattened out to pounded tin: defenseless,
marked with stars and hollow moons, relentless
coming again and again past the one
thing that spills but can't stay: mountains that flow
to plains, leaving thin stains on flesh like breath
and just as loud. Alone people cannot
inherit strange names alive with glory
or moss-green eyes. On their backs, they carry
practical things like tissue paper hearts
and hooks for climbing sea cliffs. They use teeth
to peel stone, then read the signs locked beneath. 

FLOODGATES

After driving around for an hour
(or more) circling parked cars, I see a neighbor
putting suitcases in her Cadillac.
She’s off to catch the midnight plane. What luck.
(The spaciousness of such a departure.)
Glad to stop driving at last, I gesture
my thanks to her. The rain’s coming down hard
and I’ve a ways to walk but the car’s parked.
As rain pulls the scent of blooming jasmine
from night air and settles it on my skin,
I wonder if the moon’s broken through dreams
that line your night. I’m tired, ready for sleep
for the forgiving radiance of dream,
but can’t. I have overstayed my time. Vivam
Ovid writes to close his verse I will live
I will last.
              So might we, cloaking ourselves
in colors drawn from stone the emptied wells
of memory of bone. The brightest silks,
I think, are those that stay when skin leaves skin
and eyes close against misremembered scent.
The rain's more now than when this walk began
and I’m washed out by flood. Dark comes on slant,
flat as panes of glass and I wish I had
above me yards of yellow silk to act
as a dam might, holding this rain on high
as a hidden reservoir crystalline
and blue: a perfect lens that opens sky
to a wash of stars I rarely ever see.