a string of homecomings

sundown, between clear
and stark water, a channel
with a mermaid and a fool
on a catamaran. it's carnival.

a pearl in your mouth
falls into a lucid palm.
sitting, tapping keys
against the table,waiting
for authorship to grab your
collar or kick it into
a cross country drive.

it's perilous to court poetry
his excuses are bangles
for your wrists.
















*(&&&&






after we put the kids
into their tents for the night
often we'd take up music
or discuss a piece from the book
you or i had read that morning
during toilet, when the east was a candle
in a frosted glass set inside
adobe walls. i stare at you,engrossed
in a book you found on the shelf
releasing the offal of your dreams.

i pretend sleep; solitude is an amethyst
worn on a circle of morning and yoke.
i have mine to slip on later,
after you've gone from our bed again.


when we never came to these rivers
or caught the fish to send back to the stream
or found the rhythm of days unencumbered
with the sharp whip we used to claim life, when we
lay beside each other, making music that looked
like our fire haired child, her dark lashes
his depthless pupils. when that didn't happen
and i loved you anyway.










^&^%



or.... at least
i stayed i tried i wanted
it
to
be
real.





and you stayed. i still can't
say why. was your love so
different from mine?








*(&&








we met in a ghetto nasty
shelter for the homeless

overwhelmed by bills or bad
choices i got into a program for women
sociologists to get me
out of the gutter

too sensitive to work
bad with deadlines but creatively
gifted with a genius
for bouncing from man to man
none of whom understand her.
you apologised for the inconvenience

























*(&


time spirit