Watchers

Eye draws.
Eyes draw me into your line of view,
your lens sight where I see you clearly
or as clearly as can be
between the wishes of hand and eye
and another blank page flaring white at noon
in the sun
over Phillips square.

Page as pale as the whitest hijab
I've ever seen, strolled by me,
and a woman all in blue beneath.
Electric blue silk,
and the river rises from below
to swallow the square and the ankles of all who stand
or sit on the edge with our legs dangling
in the lake we haven't noticed
rising slowly, lapping steady
north of every old high water mark
of floods from seasons past.
The waters rise. On every back, on every collar
blue is cool against our skins, and even higher,
when your mouth is open wider.
Let it in. Open wider,
and let the river in.

Photograph

This is a camera's click, a
paper's flash,
a lens flare,
and your face is no more, my dear.
Your closed quiet face is no more.

This is the blotted
page, the mottled
stain, spreading fast, ever still on the square
of illusional silverprint locked in a drawer
where I once found a silverfish scurrying dear,
and I once lost a lock of your hair.

This is a number, or seven.
Odds are even
now it wouldn't fail to reach your ear.
When the meaning isn't ---
and the past is a deafening cadence,
there's enough time between us for silence.
Enough is behind us for --- .

Ludo, my Insomnia

Have you met Ludo?
Inexorable, and therefore made at home,
I'll never be alone
at night, eyes open wide,
with Ludo by.
Dreaming of a home I'll never find,
of arms not mine, Ludo laughs,
and forgives me my follies.
Yet Ludo forbids me my night's errant pathways:
"Save them for the day,
don't think of it 'til day."

Ludo, I have carried you
from one room to another in this house,
and then another, until you know the place
almost as well as I. Please try
not to hold this against him.
But after all,
who know better than you the turning routes my unconscious takes
when it's past the end of yesterday,
and tomorrow is too far off? No wonder
that I drag you from room to room for hours on end.

Ludo, my insomnia.

This Battered Night

Tired body changes
before dawn from animal to woman;
body's skin slips on again,
pulled from reluctant corners,
resistant and harbouring, along with the hide,
seven consecutive stages of sleep.
Skin slips on again,
fits like a second layer of,
still loose, raw in patches,
not yet attached to body.
Skin slips on again.

This battered night and tortuous waking,
to seven stars still low
on the horizon, wet with fog,
and you are missing.

Offer me this morning
as if it were yours to give, this rising
sun as if held in your hands, enormous orange
in a country sick with solitude.
Give this day to me in spite.
In spite of differences, we rise
under the same sun.

All my suns are on the street.

Her Eyes

Her red hair against the green,
her red-amber eyes from the shadow of the porch
watch all,
are seen in return,
don't mind.

She raises cups of strong sweet coffee to her lips,
sets them down again on blue and white saucers.
Drinks to hide her thoughts,
the smile and scowls that chase across her lips
on the very edge of St. Joseph.

Her pale winter skin,
white hands,
flaxen forehead, eyes of silk
left too long out in the sun.
Her stilled voice,
sighing now but what she
says you can't understand.
Her ancient forest voice,
the rustlings of sap, brambles reach,
and every tree is woken.

Following the Wake

(Written in the early morning, February 15)

How long
since I have seen this light?
White light, mingled only
with the blue of latent evening,
early morning,
daylight shifts receding
into twilight. Slips th'abysmal
thread of lucid admiration
onto fingers white with plying
river waters. Under chariots,
under bridges run the tendrils,
gellid fingers, run the marvels
of a winter early dying,
of a February morning,
of returning, of the past.

Of the past, and of the passing,
as the snow is briefly falling
over aquaduct and thicket,
spent the summer briefly waking,
spent the autumn bearing berries,
spent the winter spent, and making
up for time lost in the turning
of a tertiary season.
'Tis the season.

Winter, call me.

Ceilings

Late morning Saturday,
late February,
late winter in the month
before rejuvination, motion
to the new old house, seeking
always to be home, to come to this nest of pillows,
music soothing from your cavern to the south.

A creature of the north, I adore
this house.
The ceilings call me,
after many nights of gazing
in the gloam of early morning
at their ragged, crannied skins.