excavation

so i have two very old yahoo mail accounts
during the time when hotmail was the hottest thing
and yahoo a smalltyme player. the inboxes are stuffed
with astrology forecasts, spam, grist, automatic
notices and cgg come ons. i dunno i decided
to look in the sent file and found a poem
praised by a good friend submitted, rejected.
been wondering about it for a while, was it
really all that? good poems age like wine, corked.
this one is too sugary by half with a hint
of moulder. still,

mathematics (after kipling)
>
> once upon a time love was whole
> it needed nothing outside of self,
> or so it would say to rain when rain
> whispered like a thousand cicadas
> against its windows.
>
> it started with a crack a vibration
> of desire. shhhhush! love told rain
> go see to your rivers. but rain drove its
> fingers into the fissure pried and pulled at love
> till love fell apart and let rain wash fill it.
>
> being already full there was no room for rain and love
> to be together so love let go some of itself
> let rain settle in grooves that burst in the absence
> of where love once was now striating now coalescing
> now disolving through one vessel or another
> it didn't look like a spiral it didn't
>
> taste like mint. trying to hold
> itself it fell, water through a clay fork
> and that became the moon, my love,
> and that became the sea.
>





so i keep reading, emails to people i don't remember
and to those i do. poems dropped across the line
like this one, i once tried to turn into a song.
i think i like the verse about running along the river best...


flame
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
her fingers small and pudgy
reach out and touch the brightness.
she pulls back screaming
sucks the burn
cries herself to sleep

she's drawn to the way
a bic flares, the sound of match
the crinkly dryness of summer brush
rippling like creekbed over pebble.
she gathers tinder by feel
under half moon.


daddy taught her about fire
rings but not about sparks.
she runs beside the canal as the night
brightens. her shoes are covered in soot.


she never gets caught but her hair turns red.
she sees the glow of the oven
reaches to touch it with a tissue.

her mother warns her.
she warns the sun.
the sun stops listening she can tell
can't you see all this darkness?
she reaches the pinpoint of combustible.