BLBruce's Xanga

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 04:17:11 GMT

Evening

The curtains flutter
and for a moment
I think
someone's dancing
on the lawn.

©BLBruce, 2009.

Sunday, November 01, 2009

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 22:53:16 GMT

The Sunrise on Fifth Street
For M.

I open my eyes. Laying still,
I stare at the gauzy, delicate white curtains
illuminated by the morning sun.
The clock on the bedside table ticks faintly.

Unhurried, my eyes wander about the room.
The Christmas cactus on a stool in the corner
is blooming, brilliant red blossoms drip
from the many splayed jade-green stems.
A Diego Rivera painting hangs on the wall:
a dark-haired girl in a cream colored tunic carries
a cluster of calla lilies.

Outside the window: the faint flutter and
chit-chat of chickadees in the aspens.
They clatter together the leaves on thin white branches.
I smile at them, but they can't see me.

The figure beside me stirs. The heel
of his foot gently kicks at my shin.
I press my breasts to his bare back and he rolls
over, eyes clouded by sleep, struggling
to focus on me in the bright light.

Good morning, he hums. He pulls me toward
him and our knees touch. With his eyes still
closed, he slides his hand out from under the white sheets
to rest it on my cheek. He feels me smile with his palm
and he smiles too.
You were in my dream last night. I feel the crease
deepen between my brows. There was a short pause.
The world was ending.

He opens his eyes and lifts his head from
the pillow, listening. Everyone around me was dying
or crying. Some people were singing and dancing,
Some people were making love. You were
looking for me. We were looking for eachother.

Did I find you? He asks.
I don't think so. I shake my head.
He looks at me and I watch the corners of
his mouth turn downward. Leaning into me on
the mattress, he kisses my forehead.

©BLBruce, 2009.

Saturday, October 17, 2009

Sat, 17 Oct 2009 01:06:13 GMT

Ghost

In the middle of the afternoons
she lays out her dead lover's clothes on the bed:
a green plaid jacket, white t-shirt, dark blue denim jeans
with holes at the heels and at the knees.
A heavily broken-in pair of sneakers
patiently rest on the floor, side by side.
She watches the clothes like they might come alive,
flesh filling the hollows of the soft fabrics
the way air might inflate wilted sails.
Now, she smokes a cigarette in her underwear
folded into a chair on the far end of the room,
while the clothing lay vacant, expectant.

©BLBruce, 2009

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 04:56:38 GMT

The Train

This morning the cattails sway
under the weight of red-winged blackbirds
with their sputtering chatter.
Amongst marsh reeds
the subtle croak of toads
echo out and into glassless windows.

And because neither had imagined
the stillness of the barren, deserted railway cars
bordering the old millpond,
their hands slid beneath soft cotton--
soon, two nude figures startle mice
under the floorboards, moisten the dust
on an unforgiving wooden bench.

Beneath cobwebs in the eaves of the cabin
they dress and climb down the ladder
away from the train tracks,
the girl stepping over the detritus of oiled ties and scrap steel
ahead of the boy that looks away,
watching the splash of red and yellow
on the black wings of the birds in the reeds.

©BLBruce, 2009

Monday, October 12, 2009

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 19:28:56 GMT

The Hare, the Sparrow, and the Marlin

The grass does not live in me,
nor the tangled mess of roots,
the constellations of pebbles
in the dirt.

The hare's fear of the coyote,
the heron and the sparrow's wing-beat
live in me as does the
fluid slide of the marlin and the porpoise
in the swell of tides.

I cannot know why
the owl questions the dusk
or what the stallion considers
in empty, rolling plains,
but I feel the strength of their haunch
and the pull of earth under foot as my own,
longing for space to run.

I can weep like the mourning dove
and the fold of the flower's petals
in the absence of sun mimic the woeful
belittlement of my limbs
in the cold.

All together we breathe,
each in rhythm with none but ourselves,
yet we share empathy and guilt,
a kinship with kreeping things
in the wood, the deserts,
and in the sea.

I am water and bones and teeth,
pink flesh,
the rain and the sky do not live in me,
but with me,
and the wind move over me,
but does not join my blood.
The dust of my body was
once the dust of stars,
the stars that flicker in the black bed of night,
from which the moon smiles,
silently awaiting the
sun's return once more.

©BLBruce, 2009

Monday, October 12, 2009

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 19:16:39 GMT

Traveling East Through Vermont

Sugar maples blush in the chilling
autumn gusts. White-tailed deer bound over brooks,
settling a path in thick, dew-studded meadows.
Dusk, we drift along a highway through shadows of birch trees.
In the quieted sunlight, the pale trunks are fragile white bones.

©BLBruce, 2009

Friday, September 25, 2009

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 02:03:45 GMT

The Morning Poem.

A glacier of fog
advances and meanders--
more quickly than ice might--
into the forested basins
one morning in October.

And seeing this,
I have the urge to
write poetry, but
born from the breath in
all their art and danger,
when I finally find a pen,
I forget just exactly what
the eyes of my murmured
words saw.

If I only could have shared this,
to have another memory at hand,
I think,
but then again,
a lot of poets die alone.

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 18:19:38 GMT

Goodbye summer.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 21:58:52 GMT

Sand Dollar Beach

Looking through a thick curtain of fog,
only a small porthole of Sand Dollar Beach
is exposed before the sun wakes and the waves
smother the sand at high tide.

But when the tide ebbs and falls away,
the detritus of crustaceans--
empty seashells, the exoskeletons of sand crabs,
nickels and dimes of sand dollars--
litter the gentle incline of dark sand
with delicate white ornaments of decay
further than the farthest reach of the
lick of waves.

The fisherman are scarce,
and I am taken by surprise
when they materialize out of the mist.
They stand silent with their backs to me
in their plastic straw hats and rubber waders
to cast their lines into the surf,
their faces solemn
and weather-worn.

Godwits and sanderlings stand motionless
amongst the Curlews and pipers,
waiting in the spray, eyeing me
cautiously and their calls are muted
within my temporary earshot.
One stride too near and
they take to the endless sea of bleak sky
with the other shorebirds swimming like fish.

Silently, pelicans sail in procession
one after the other in small linear droves,
across the curved metallic faces of waves
before veering upwardand circling overhead,
mixing with silhouetted gulls and terns
all fluttering their broad shoulders and feathery fingers
against the gray mist,
looking down into the water from above
with their own fisherman's eye, yet much too
wise and acquainted with the water
to come home empty handed,
defeated by the sea,
skunked, the fisherman say,
spirits dissolving like the fog
under the mid-morning sun.

Monday, August 24, 2009

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 18:02:07 GMT

Somewhere After

The day slips away behind
the distant rounded peaks of
sleeping sun-worn trees,
sliding like honey over the hips
and breasts and tongues
of mountains licking the last
of the golden waves of light
from the emptying spoonful of sky above.

From your airplane window
I wonder if you can feel the way
the weakened horizon sun
seizes the flecks of green in your hazel eyes,
like the way it seems to me when
you stand beside the bedroom window,
sea salt curtains on the glass,
your eyes smiling in that honey colored light.

When all has surrendered to twilight
and the silent darkness that falls somewhere after,
I listen to the sound of the screech owl weeping,
a grieving birdsong of misery so beautiful
I begin to cry.

I say to the screech owl,
I am like you,
calling, singing, screaming into the early
newness of night a lament of sorrow,
aimlessly scattering a sadness from deep within
into the black forest,
and in the basin of silence that follows,
there is no answer,
no hope for the lullabies he sings
to me through his touch.

Even if I never see your face again,
as the owl evades me in the black silhouettes of trees,
the memory alone of your eyes cradled
between my palms may be enough
for the coming winter.