Reading these old poems as they age
these poems I had dug out of
pressed orchids and fungi
winter memories of spring
ashes of summers past
the song of snow hissing
the hollow melody of moon
the forgiveness of sand
and so much else
that bleeds or sings
or glistens in an eye
Reading these old poems
resurrects the prayers
that haunted dreams
iterated by desiccated lips
hurled like clicking chicken bones
at the stumbling feet of the dinosaur
Snow clings to the old maple here like a last night’s lover
desperately hugging her Master Sergeant in the ticket line
so long ago on Boxing Day at McCallum Airport.
He was tall muscular and black, heading back to Vietnam.
But his flight to the base was sold out; her tears
spilled like wine on his pressed marine greens:
she wrapped him like Medusa on a branch
all the way to the door and the Texas sun.
In winter through this second storey window I see them still.
The wrinkles that I wanted as a youth
are now engraved by Time’s impatient blade
into the caricature of that vague dream.
But do not laugh or cry; just know
that steely carver of skin has played a joke
and granted an ancient wish too quickly and too soon.
