Here are three poems I call "Prelude."
The first two are kind of verse, the third one is prose.
Prelude one.
I sigh from something that comes scraping crossways
through the blizzard.
Fragment out of what is to come--
a world gotten loose, something eyeless, hard, a face of teeth.
A wall alone, or is a house there even
though I can't see it?
The future-- an army of empty houses
feeling their way forward in the falling snow.
Two.
Two truths approach each other.
One comes from inside, the other from outside, and where
they meet we have a chance to catch sight of ourselves.
The man who sees what's about to take place
cries out wildly, Stop anything!
If only I do not have to know myself.
And the boat exists that wants to tie up on shore.
It's trying right here.
It will try thousands of times yet.
Out of the darkness of the woods,
long boat hook appears, pokes in through the open window,
in among the guests who are getting warm dancing.
Three.
The apartment where I lived over half of my life
has to be cleaned out.
It's already empty of everything.
The anchor has let go, despite the continuing weight of grief.
It is the lightest apartment in the whole city.
Truth doesn't need any furniture.
My life has just completed a big circle
and come back to its starting place--
a room blown out.
Things I have lived through here become
visible on the walls like Egyptian paintings--
murals from the inside of the grave chamber.
But the scenes are growing fainter
because the light is getting too strong.
The windows have got larger.
The empty apartment is a large telescope held up to the sky.
It's silent as a Quaker service.
All you can hear are the doves in the backyard--
they're cooing.