In The Poetry

Window

Your eyes, child, in the window: the steady gaze
focused on nothing special, it would seem,
unless that chestnut in the day’s last sun,
as though you wouldn’t really dream of it
yet liked to think the candle’s inner mist
would light the coming dark. Something of her
in that, her hidden self a wistful look.
More human yours and yet you [...]

Vigil

Now you are gone
your small perfections inveigle me:
curve of your eye-lid closed in sleep
widens to my horizon.

Sleepless
I used to watch those pupils move,
shifting deltas of blue veins,
blindly scanning my face.

Some nights I came near,
my lips in touch
with your pulsing lids
to catch the drift of your dream.

Half-light

It isn’t dark enough, not yet, they think,
to close the curtains on the coming night.

It’s dark enough and the air growing chill.
How vulnerable the lights look from outside.

Auburn, the look of her, dressed for a dance
maybe and listening for the phone, his car.

I’m trying not to give another glance.
Lit window thirty years back up that [...]

Eighth Period

Last year’s sexkitten, out of work again,
(mean effrontress, chased and bare)
saunters about the grounds with her great Dane,
as sandy blonde as that lassitude of hair -
boy-hunting, leash seductively in hand.
Four o’clock and time to make a stand.

I plot my progress through the room to reach
the window for a glimpse of her, compare
her insinuity with [...]

Gift of Words

That patience of yours,
standing half the morning
to watch a rose you planted bloom.

So long like that, years,
you’ve waited for me.
I have to watch you always.

Crescent of melon, your bare back
where blouse and jeans have come apart.
The window’s between us.

Too impatient to watch your roses,
I want my hands to feel
the equipoise of your hips.

You [...]