Letters III: Dear beloved,

Sorry, but I couldn't afford to be seen as such,
A naked thought, a wish spoken out loud.

I didn't want be uncovered so easily,
Like a rhetorical question, barely heard.

Not when I could have been the world outside
Revealed in the windows of a moving train,

In light and movement i might have been infinite,
Attached to memory, undistinguished, something beautiful.

I wanted to appear slow, like headlights in dense fog,
Like yellow hands reaching down an open road,

An ethereal gesture, a ghost in the distance;
Alien and familiar - a paradox.

Transfigured, I'd have been formless,
Free from this skeletal wreck

Like smoke, an arid fog hovering overhead,
Adrift in the vacant city... belonging to the wind.

I am an unanswered question,
By you I am made real,

Held tight within your memory I will be
Timeless, beautiful, free from human pain.

Only as a thought can I become shapeless,
Bound only by your imagination.

In you I am repeated, reinvented, re-imagined,
Unrestrained, undistinguished, something beautiful.

Dear Photographic Memory,

Look, a house!
By the cemetery,
A town for a ghost,
A sister and me,
Where fallen leaves
Filled the cradle,

Where I'd say speak to me,
A language on your shoulder blades.
Whisper with your hands,
New words for old demands, designs to extract,
To obtain, and then destroy;
Something heartbreakingly beautiful.

Fading from the picture
In the folded newspaper,
Is a hand on the window
And footprints in sawdust,
And the scent of cherry blossom trees,
And a cradle mounted by fallen leaves.

When long ago
This image contained
A boy sinking sideways
Into the picture frame,
With wide green eyes
And a shape so deceiving,

And from a living sky,
A sunset retreating...
This scene was marked
But inevitably became lost
Among heirlooms and keepsakes,
Buried in the ground, lost,

While rain beat on the grate,
I stumbled upon this old box,
A dusty, wounded crate,
Drawn with spider webs and tape.
A part time archeologist,
Employed by my boyish wonder,
My pay checks signed by
My pension for wistful remembering.

I sat cross legged in the crawl space,
Down with the dirt and soot,
And the crackle of the fire place.
I picked over the blue prints;
The pictures and letters,
And I traced the history of a house
Erected by a cemetery.

Where I'd say Lie with me
A little longer, till day comes,
Demands that came from abandon,
Designs that came from adolescence,
I barely understood them myself.
I preferred the gray sky to a sunny day,
But didn't know why. I would stroll
Down the halls of the house like a ghost.
Like the many ghosts in the pictures,
Like the tired, used up men who built it.

I too feel this home is a labour,
Something understood through geography,
When I run my hands along the railings,
I'm touching memories inscribed in material,
I am privy to a story told in the knots and bricks
That appear like messages in invisible ink.

What's in me I wonder?
Am I made of similar things?
I am somehow lead to believe
That such mystery is impossible now,
It is saved for old, dead things,
Preserved for that rugged, ancient world.
Yet, when I touch the fireplace,
When I walk across the wood floors
I feel a part of a timeless sadness,
A slow, turning seriousness-
This old world reserve is an imprint,
like the knots in the railing,
or the spots of paints on the golden bricks,
I am marked by these ghosts.
I have grown with their grim knowledge.

When A Young Man Feels Old (1st Draft)

What does it mean for a young man to feel old?
When he stops dead on lonely streets and searches back,
always back, into his labyrinth past
and surfaces with countless, folded pictures,
Should he fear the passing of time?
What grave, unnatural thing is this,
When a young man feels old?

From a distilled day I plucked certain sounds;
a nervous cry in a subway tunnel;
the creaking of your floorboards,
and i became lost in them.
Young people should feel, should run,
Should have the privilege to be ignorant.

I remember, one gray October day,
speeding past the silent lake,
That when i looked out that way,
I felt infinity twist and break,
deep within me its wounded claw
dragged and then was lost,
To me and to the water lost.
And I became an open wound.

Now I walk under the weight of reflection,
Gripped, because everything is attached,
I am inadvertently focused on my past,
I am held at a distance from the moment.
And yes, there is poetry in my life,
but the most telling exchanges are wordless.

Child Round The Fire (a song)

They walked the oak lined roads
Stretched out ahead,
Alight with the moon
In a celestial bed,
And stopped by the burial
Arms outstretched,
They saw in earth and light
A rhythm etched

There was a spark
In the wood,
Amongst the trees,
Climbing down
There I stood
At its knees
And I was reborn;
A child round the fire

Appeared like rust, metal blades
Swinging high
Your brother’s saw in the glade,
A winding sigh,
And in her bed your mother’s curtain
blown by the wind
With the baby’s cries, the cedar’s smell,
A tree’s dead limb

There was a spark
In the wood,
Amongst the trees,
Climbing down
There I stood
At its knees
And I was reborn;
A child round the fire

Back To Quiet Streets

I climbed down. There was a sudden gust
of cold mountain air brushing the lip
of a mouth of metal, jagged teeth were clenched,
bared in the face of the open, natural world.
I almost slipped there, up among the clouds,
lost in the dividing line of diminishing shades,
where the sun behind the cliff makes the landscape
shrink and disappear.

A figure bound in clutter, evaporating into himself,
I was a man who'd lost the fire, and was searching for it
out there, in the rugged, wild frontier,
where only ghosts whisper at night
where only animals belong.

When I surfaced to the highways and buildings
I was, once again, a letter in a phrase,
a symbol woven in a tapestry,
trash along the parade route.
But, hidden within me was a natural rhythm,
a song beat into silent foothills,
I had kept a piece of that raging wonder,
so I could visit it alone, when ambling down quiet streets.
Traveling deeper, deeper, into myself.

Something Else

Remember me fondly,
a vision removing stasis
from an undistinguished day,
like sudden rain, or
some holy child memory
count me, infinite
like drops of rain
collecting on your
windowsill.

And I will be something unshaped
by your swinging blades,
those scythes cutting for time, i will be
unscathed, only an imprint,
a brand on your shoulder blade.
Remember me as in a dream,
shapeless and sedentary,
fixed within your haunting,
like fog in the morning,
sifting through cars and
stray lights

We know our limitations,
They're cast bodily within us,
Though I wish to be more;
in your photo album
I can be like water weaving
through an emerald embankment
I can be like a violent storm
or a warm breeze moving a blade of grass,
I will show up unannounced
and make room for myself in your dreams,
if only a little while.