become fungus, the skin

     holed with fungus

     and she become

this.  My clever body

     turned to obtuse

     stumbles with only

time and seldom noticing.

     They won't play

     again, either

of them, for their own sakes,

     yet they try

     to answer to me.

This is what she is now

     and this I).

     At most I thought

dirty bulbs or cocoons

     secret with life;

     I thought

all our beautiful changes

     ripened to fruit,

     split to wings.

Profile (action)

Forswearing the absurd panicky joy

     of capturing hearts,

supporting himself by arms that do

not hold him, the gold and the blackened

     twisted sides

flail needy rage, blows

richly overdetermined:  warning

     away touch,

spending anger, and misdirecting eyes.

Meantime the innocent delivered.  Meantime

     wide open,

and still, for the dying's circumscribed love.

Morning (detail)

Unraveling the variety

of your next arrival is a day's task:  to sort

your briskly offered news from the note

of insistence that I

hear you again; to decipher the clues of the books

you lend (one I want, with one

you want me to like);

to decode the surprise of your gaze dropping and rising.

I want instruments finer than memory

to play over the notes

and define the blend of advance and hesitation

in your delicate orchestration

of return after burst anger.

Full length

Let us put into perspective this

          man who throws

          telephones.  Even

     when dawn is early he

     is earlier at bedsides, and quieter

than the sleeper's mutter; the only

                                                Continue   In Love With the Angel

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