THERE WAS A CALMNESS IN THE PINES

I saw the shrine flicker in the distance like a ghost

the motor’s intonation floating through

air like glass, or white-horsemen who approach in heat-haze  

& the fear came back

a stone-upon-the-water

(I saw birds

trailing into silence)

& the white-figures swept past desolations          

as blue-shadows played upon-the-screen, enigmas    

I knew it then & often reminisce

the red-siphons that pulse in dark-rooms

the summer-rains that burned

my eyes like tears, I saw the egrets

lift from

waters-of-stillness, where leaves flutter

in winds that singed-your
skin, & the beginnings of something-criptic                          

I was on the floor when the eagles tore
the carcass from our hope, swept downstream in those currents

that siphon sand from your soles 

thirteen years, & the mystics disappear        

I saw the shrine-quiver in light-that-filters-down   

the sirens winding through courtyards          

I bore the

sigil of an incision

that erased a single-word                           

who was it that insists without-a-face

(I saw birds-dissolve-in-cypress) 

who was it that refused to ever change

THE RIDE BACK IN REMEMBRANCE

Driving through thick-blankets

of mist, the light cut into darkness

like a scythe.  We were beginning

to get a sense of it, we thought…

& every now & then a liquid-sign

would slip in our peripheral vis-

ion.  I had to keep on talking so  

as to prevent her from nodding-off

at each sector, drifting along the

endless stretch of highway, the

music a warble-of-birdsong, & each

syllable a sound that sunk into our

consciousness.  Had the mist begun to  

let up some?  On our left we saw

the ocean swell like a woman’s

pale-stomach, & our past vanished

into the waves that rose with each

breath of inflection…  I saw a Japanese

house along-the-water, a little wind-

chime hung from slate-shingles

in distances I’d seen flash past...   

It could have been the absinthe, she

said, but the lights that swoon in

pockets-of-illusion slip into halls of silence. 

She was focused on the road, & I

wound a string of filament around

her thigh, at which she smiled,

seemed not to mind.  Gradually

the sea tapered off into rivulets. 

I watched its strands winding through

the darkness-like-a-snake, before

trailing off into the city.  Night       

balanced on the cusp a moment,

then plunged into a ghost-abyss…