1.

And this scar still hungry
scratching the way volcanoes
reach for nourishing snow
and just above the treeline
in back my ear, clamped
as if a mountaineer had placed
a rock and at the peak
exactly at dawn, points out
the soothing cold where air
comes to die and another year
has just been born
is already listening for leaves
for icy streams, for fish
carried back to spawn
in the rising clear water

--for you but you hear only the cloud
still damp, the slow climbing turn
where my scar bites down
on another Spring grown fat from snow

--you don't hear where to swerve
where to circle and the sky too
is lost, is looking for the Earth
for you and on my shoulder
higher and higher more skin
already dead and this little stone
I can't put on the ground.

returning stones and raving.



2.

--to be the darkness just forming
the way stonecutters still begin
--with each fountain, closing its eyes
and these stars too
trying night after returning night

--the trembling rush
that would become my heart
and even the Earth not spared
once it stops to rest --back to being
the heaviness that's now my arms
and the sun years away

--where else! a windowsill
weatherbeaten, exactly the same weight
underwater --here I can count
backwards, send off my lips
to the bottom that has no sound yet
--slowly at first and my bones
even now kept hollow for birds, roots
that devour morning after helpless morning

unable to climb --even now
I lean this side, then that
as if you are here still rising
from a sea, alongside clouds
--a gentle sound starting up
left empty and your beautiful body
filling with flowers
not yet these sweet-smelling stars
half way between my hand and my other.



3.

I clench this cup
the way kids batter a piñata
and through the crack
you yell once more
to throw the damn thing away
despite my bloodsoaked teeth

--maybe I hold it too close
as if scrubbing would ward off
and your lips made beautiful
by water asleep for twenty years
though there's barely room for the kiss
that will pierce my throat
tear out the rust so you know
what's worn down, that never
gets it right, still smells
from damp grass fallen out the Earth
and you reach for my hands
to fill them with your breasts

--maybe you can't be found
that there never was a forest
that this cup was dented
from wooden crates, cardboard
and the fire inside an old drum
broken open by trumpets and hidden palaces

--maybe from so much rain
the stones are full and my mouth
broken apart for the still hard candy
the warm cakes :bells
that melt the sun into water
and I bathe this emptiness
over and over and over
as if it was just born
and every drop. 

_____________________