I'
m not sure I can do this
count hawks--
overshadowing us as they become dragons
whose ashen wings lure us
to the brittle edge
of the world, glazing the fountain which sprays
rainbows of our own making-
although it's clear
you leapt into stellar space without taking me.
The eve of the Autumn Moon Festival, the amber sun
turns cool, the same red of yesterday's movie,
when the grief-mute violin maker
stains the wood
with blood of his wife--her spirit and stillborn child
singing through deathless ages.
I could write to you
on yellow foolscap, let ink of my middle-aged blood
brand you with today's headline: Neighbors Cringe
at Sight of School's Dragon--North Oketo Avenue,
the dragon's lair.
From a third floor café,
I watched a celtic fiddler keen in cords
while top hats and swallowtails,
riding on maroon cushions
in black carriages, fall in love with beautiful ugliness
of dray horses. Open-air motor coaches
hawk the skyline,
(How many times did we buy Sears Tower,
wrapped in a wet grey so smooth we thought
its million windows hummed the song of the orca?)--
all to make another day rise
for me from the lake
as if from no other land's-end; as if you, too,
rise above the small-leafed linden
going brown in patches
behind my porch, above a fiddler swaying to a lilt
which carves coils on stone. Newgrange: the center
of the Cave of Solstice. Where I have buried your heart