WEBVTT

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For a long time I was
trying to write a poem

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about doing massage work.

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And I came up
against the paradox

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which was that the
person who does massage

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is a nonverbal person.

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She would not speak
she had nothing

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to say she just liked to do it.

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And I wrestled with this
for months, maybe two years,

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trying to find the
way into this poem

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because it means a
great deal to me.

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It's a form of worship to me.

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And I wanted to speak about it.

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But I couldn't until I
realized that she is nonverbal.

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And I had to write a
persona poem so to speak.

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The poet had to write
what the poet thought

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the masseuse was going to say.

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"So the Masseuse".

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Always an angel rises from
the figure, naked and safe

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between my towels
as before taboo.

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It's why I close my eyes.

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A smell precedes him as the
heart fills from his bowl.

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I bow down to the
riddle of the ear.

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Its embryonic swirl
nested with nodes

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that calm the uncurled spine,
a maypole among organs.

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Each day, a stranger or
almost crosses my heart

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to die from the unsayable
into the thickened beating

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of those wings and we are shy.

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Or frightened, as
with clothes on we

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forget abysmally what
heaven shares with death.

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What gypsy vowels unshackled
from the lips rush

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the impenetrable
mind and the atlas

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clicks in my trowel hands.

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Crocuses on the threshold
south side then and now.

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It goes on like an egret scaling
the unruly bands of atmosphere

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we have agreed on by my palms,
erratic longing of the flesh

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to dry.

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Toes crack, hips
soften and the spine,

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a seaweed in the
shallow spool undulates

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lights like a musical
string by the struck note,

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helpless with harmonics.

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Rock, cradle the
perceptible scar

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of the compass, sensible
stigma and a poised blind

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of trust angling for
reentry and the rain,

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the wind across its
face like minnows

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and the dark of love schooling
the light will speak to you

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and you will walk home,
dizzy, grazed by the gloaming

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and the just illumined stars.

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