A Vision

We lie naked face to face in semidarkness,
your body's profile an exquisite, timeless curve ...

We touch, explore each other gently, somehow not erotic,
looking, seeing, exposing to each other
a wonder that is eternal, yes, erotic, yes, ours alone.

I don't know

Once I asked a new friend, "How old are you?"
She answered appropriately, "I don't know."

At a 50th anniversary reunion,
I fell in love with a bunch of old people
with whom I had fallen in love many times before,
each time a wonder, each time anew,
each one unique, each a surprise,
each one so deep I never knew.
I'm astonished, in awe, in a stew:
how can I love, how renew,
how can I thank, how can I be in love so much
with you and you and you?
Brothers and sisters, lovers and friends,
I love you ... it never ends.

Mom

And now wacky am I, I thank you, mother, for 

the days I take no pill;

the oak table that folds upon itself,

a hinge, a turn, a hidden box 

containing nothing, a silence left to me alone;

the vaporous song echoing here from the 

dusty floor of a small house

in a village like so many.

I thank you that I somehow sing 

though rhythmns and their verses 

keep note and meaning but to me, 

through the doubt that song to my self 

in silence be song at all.

Vackra Svenska Flickor

Observing you, two beautiful Swedish girls called Ingrid and a friend at the Deutches Museum,
we engaged in human physics,
two college friends denying the existence of god
and senseless domestic inhibitions on a mission abroad.

We studied history, science, art and Svenska tullar,
and vackra Svenskar flickor won.

We later bought and unabashedly named an old Volksbug, 'Ingrid',
fondled her brazenly, drove our passions reckless
through luscious Europa's unquenchable body by day,
slept with the Ingrid who carried us and dreamed of embracing you.

Sue

Made explicit still, her wide brimmed hat and lovely dress
one afternoon in May,
captured in a mutual, unexpected wave goodbye,
never never understood, never sans regret.

Ginna

Ginna spinning delight somewhere between cotton and blonde;
gentle, sweet, complicit in a prom or two,
we shared an assassination, a post-grad fraternity or two,
a sister's indiscretion, respected in cautions both observed.
Love, then hurt turned ruin by an innocent but uncommunicated choice
found to be the basic globe, cartography finite, to explore for my life.

June

Summer fare and crested day is only made by wintering spring
Growing red till slow magic, supple leaves and heat begin;
The pictures drawn in May, conceived in March, sprouted in A-pril
Bring gawky birds alive, dancers in the woods, streams and party life
pour through abstraction to reality we know and share.
A life creating family, art and home from painted canvas, skin and bone .