"In a Time of Scanty Resources."
"At the foot of the mountain, the lake,
at spontaneous affection the transitory,
at the cloud height, the gull, at the water's break, the ruin,
at the ruin, the end, at the end, the light of eternity.
Two figures supposing but huddled next
to the roar of snow wash, boulders gray in the distance
and gray and cold so near.
Upward they see five hawks circling
and for a moment an octagonal tower
and a sudden terrace or roof deck gold at the end of day.
Their conversation in this wild remains cylindrical
and unmoving a building in winter exactly square.
Precisely unreachable from any side on a grassy plinth,
the edifice disguised as idyllic love
wears its double banded cornice as a crown.
Lying to either side of the grass,
the gravel edges the exterior wall and borders the graves.
A soaring entry canopy pierces the church
as a relief of molded glass.
The worshippers on tour are led through the vestibule
and the bay across acres of geometric tile.
This fortified box with its air well like a threshold
with its eaves as songbirds peeling upward in a parapet.
Looking skyward through folded planes,
the funnel effect like a flirt all
conjured to convince us of the structures
mystery or its makers power.
What demons pursue us, what hauntings we trail,
what blessings we produce for one
another here will be recorded for the heartsong and the tear.
The valley at the edge of the notebook, the seamless water,
its crab, and whale.
In a time of scanty resources, the myth of plenty
mocks the rubber sandals held over a second summer.
I turned from my companion and more fallen each time
ran tumbling along the sea rocks and coal.
Regret, a solid bed, my voice and tongue creeping from me
like a snake among the tombs.
At 4:50 in the afternoon, olive trees twist in benevolence.
Friends who have not been friends dying on a honey
glazed patio before an enormous fire.
The pounding heart, the drooping mouth,
the eyelid wrinkled in a place neither wet nor dry singular
nor plural.
In every instance of calamity, forgiveness is in the hands.
At the crossroads, the accused are either
gathered in a solemn mass or allowed into a clearing.
A cruel mid-autumnal rotunda, a place
to reconnoiter the death and the dawn
of it, the fish and the fowl, the fool and the fair,
all that lies in the history of your heart equally real."