Bluffed by dimples in a curve,
I was by tacit profile invited to admire
these ‘phrases of my own invention’.
I chose a proven master
from among the generous sample,
admiring the inventive swerve
that flaunted such disastrous treasure
from a simple tease of light.
Anabasis collapsing on itself,
like a flyer’s map printed on silk,
balled tight and wedged between
a morning’s worth of wine bottles,
sanding down each other’s glass
to dark blue chafe, the shine and rattle
mounting to impure percussion,
tapping just shy of shatter
at about the place the anecdote
broke off.
And looking up
through the Burgundy delay
as a raiding party of sparrows
dropped out of formation
and lighted one on one on one
from a stone’s toss to further up the slope,
hopping in and out along the mown shadows,
quiet under a mild sun.
(It pays to pay attention;
to strike a pose like death;
fearless in a hunter’s blind,
missing nothing, feigning sleep.)
Memorizing the shape of her mouth,
I registered each tone,
the still ones and the trembled,
and what her topic was I refuse, politely, to recall.
I couldn’t for the life of me
have pointed out to her what she had gained
by kissing every toad who hid
his crimes behind initials.
As if the only postcard from the tropics
bore a mention of the temperature’s
oppressive rise, that certain falling off
of style, her smile matching fig-leaf to promotion.
The rain announced itself
while still a fair way off
and we ignored it, sparrow-sentried,
holding words for ransom
on the promise of a touch,
servant-sparrows plentiful enough
to read its floating outline,
summarize it with a nervous
puddle-jumper’s flight.
Love was in the air or was it
reproach disguised as love,
disrobing into fancy dress,
a pastoral horned with Antoinettes?
A moment worth a photograph.
Knees together, legs tucked at her side,
schoolgirl skirt pleating the Kitty Hawk
towel, patient for a refill,
patient and no punches pulled.
A cloud across the sun dulled the glass
from blue to Fairfax gray
as the rain came on across the field,
something in its less-than-playful drift
alerting her to tuck her blouse back in and stare.
The challenge was to race it to the trees.
And so we ran like vandals, our headstart
blown by holding hands, her with
dragging beach towel and me made clumsy
with the hip-thumping hamper,
her bluebolt shrieks of laughter
and my precision swear words
flogging us along through sudden splatter,
the spray an unexpected slur of cold
that chased us under and into
the deep dark shelter of the woods.
The skirmish lines played out above us,
pelleting the canopy of leaves
and for a moment there was quiet
broken by our breathing.
Broken by the scattered rush and settle
of a sextet of Sparrow Ltd.,
puffed out and miserable
in their brand-new dripping bridles.
The sag and swell of the rain’s gray body
lolled across the field and held it
with a lazy power, loud as a train
ten miles long and idling
near enough to blow a kiss and louder.
Queer and perfect as an eye
with one thought only,
moving in gluttonous generosity
over the made-up panels of
knock-me-down field.
Some other name than Stratford Hill
was being battered back of
that solid sky-runged wall of rain,
let down so quickly as to cloak
the slope and distance in itself.
With sparrows to our left
and nothing to our right
we watched till measure was made
gradual, inside the dark and happy hour
showered free of thought,
where we agreed to choose:
to let one secret drown,
another slip away.