Silken white buries
A darkness we want hidden
Come snow, clean our world
Each fragile snowflake
Plots to pile its beauty’s weight
‘Til I surrender
Acrid and salty
I remember mother’s words
Don’t eat yellow snow
there once was a gent from up north,
who to kansas for college went forth.
he got some degrees
in saxophonese,
and moved with his wife to new york.
that we sailed from
all known things to
bathe in hues beyond
the visible, is now to you
indomitable grayness
years can’t be trusted to
remember how long i waited
for repentance to bow your
steely denial, ever-hardened by
my molten acceptance
waking doesn’t end the cascade
fantastical re-sensations
crash upon themselves
with a vividness reserved for
God and the young
light honey-thick swims
down my cheek and
peace patience gentleness
(unwithering fruits on undying trees)
pray i taste and share
i now more real than myself
offer as you fade from view
no longer solid enough to hold them
and soon it will be true
that you were never here
fixed on each step their
eyes unblinking dare not miss
the dry, cracked boardwalk
bows from the weight of a
man-made glory
in the moment so close to you
bikinis and boardshorts don’t
hinder their worship
as though before them now
walks the risen Christ
his brother and the three
i wish i would read The New Yorker
in a subway car and appear as smart and
savvy as she next to me from whom
i hide these words as i write
(ever-so-greatly tipping my notebook
leftward making the ink in my pen defy
gravity to get onto the page)
about her and her reading habits and savviness
while a homeless man declaims his verse
in the land of the blind with all the panache of a
homeless man shouting poems on a
subway car and i wonder if my verse will
one day be read by the smart and
savvy or heard by another young stealth poet
as i beg
the sheep meadow is not the place
especially on sunny days
to come to find a brief escape
and undisturbed meditate
in hopes that i might generate
a verse you would appreciate
but i can’t seem to concentrate
with all this hairy PDA
sometimes on my way to
church or bible study i feel
guilty for turning up my ipod and
pretending i didn’t hear that
crippled old man ask for change
microeconomics and the Chinese
airline industry go well with a
biscotti and a redeye on a
frigid monday afternoon
though i’m not sold on Haydn