Page Title

4. The Middle Aged Gypsy On Men

The middle aged gypsy likes a fallible

man. If you

remind her she can just

barely recall the time when betrayal was possible --

nights whose odors

cling to our faces -- when a word said

or not made lifetimes

shift. Lately a flawed

man is preferred, a man of incipient paunch,

not for rent

or lease; made, like a brick fireplace,

for a kind light

and lingering warmth; who can see

trouble coming a block away, and wouldn't

want back that girl.

5. Variation On A Theme By Stevens1

Our bloom is gone. We are the fruit

thereof: two gourds in autumn,

hale, fat, gold, rayed, streaked,

splashed with frost, stores of yellow

layed in, sunhoards

that, cellared for winter, keep hard,

sound, fine and full against dark

nights and short days, --

vine-ripe survivors, blossom's heirs;

having borne seed, we

guard and feed it, warted

and whole carriers, this far, of spring.

1Wallace Stevens, "Le Monocle de Mon Oncle", VIII

6. Rheomode

A way of happening is growing, a way

of growing is

happening between them. They need not

appoint it a name. A way of attending

draws their attention,

not to each other -- to where, between

the two, approach and maneuver evolve.

Love is making

in the field that depends on the presence of both.

7. Space

I forgot to see by the old rule: it fell.

Moving easy as naked in the pleasure of unconstraint

I stepped out of the frame into the invisible reaches

where freedom is not movement through space,

because I am like the tree in the breeze:

space moves through me where I stand;

and where your presence in me does not take space

but brings it, as the breeze in the tree

moves space through its branches where it stands.

Continue Third Moment