My mother’s Christmas Cactus blooms
a week before Thanksgiving. But
who among us hasn’t been confused?

poem

for Percy

Discouraged, not defeated.
Otherwise why would you lift
your leaves at night and lower
them in morning? Time enough
to dance in your slow way, to
breathe, to bask in halflight while
your dirt becomes like dust up
on a mountain, blown away.
Despite the weather heaven
sends to gather up your roots
as David gathered stones: to
set them down again in praise.

Beneath a dim red eclipse of the moon
a night–black, danger–black little cat stalks
its prey of dreams

tumbles over uneven clouds, twitching
pitch–black little paws, and as if magically
lands on its feet.

two ships

If you protest our introduction,
beating against the intransigence
of a well–meaning (well, meaning no
harm) and not uninebriated
friend, know I take no offense.

Tonight we intended to make light
work of a dear and enviable
thing, to send off in a marriage bark
two loves upon (or just beside)
the waters where they met.

But then it was insisted that we
meet here too, seven leagues and seven
deep in drink to speak for myself: just
so deep as unmoors mouth and mind, not
near so deep as courage rests

a hulking wreck just faintly spied from
the surface of our conversation
(can you call it conversation when
winds rage and rather than collide we
tack to pass by cloudless skies?)

epithalamium

for RD & SD • 15.x.22

S–—–, R—–, if you knew
The surface of a placid lake
When subtle autumn breezes make
It dance and leap, you’d know the same
My joy to see the two of you

As one and at the same time plunge
To deeper waters than that lap
Upon the shallow shifting sands
Of mere acquaintanceship and chance
Encounter; and, that shore undone

By wave on wave of choice and care,
Resurface at the center of
An ever–outward rippling Love,
That like the wind–swept spray above
It dances, shimmering, in the air.

canis minor

A shadow of the usual kind
is not so hairy, that is true.

More ordinary shadows take
to training easier as well:

they sit when you sit; walk, they heel;
shake hands, roll over — say the word

and demonstrate — they follow you.
An ordinary shadow needs

supremely little food or care.
It’s cheap. Long–lived. But then again

a shadow of the usual kind
cares very little who it tags

along behind. It may be well
behaved (an ordinary shade

will rarely gnaw the baseboard or
jump on the counter, eat your lunch,

then beg for more). It may not gaze
deep in your eyes and cock its head

until it’s your apology
to make. But at the end of the

most soul–excruciating day
at work that you have ever known,

a shadow of the usual kind
won’t bound the distance of your day–

–long separation, leap and lick
insistent, innocent, to ask

But aren’t you happy now? And now?
And now? and now? And how ’bout now?