As Mourning Doves Persist

We travel in this history of  endless dinners          frugality suspended in air over water                                        inconsolable   We stand framed in the picture window                   in the light of the fridge                   with the door  patiently standing open                                           P assers-by will stare up   at us in this second story dark and wonder why the tiny Christmas lights all year long                    ...

Over the shop where silk is sold  Still the dragon kites are flying.  (Amy Lowell 1874-1925)  

You’re in a boat on the ocean in the arms of you lover. No wait. You’re in your car delivering company mail. The sun is coming up and there’s a deer strolling across the road with no where to go, but you’re eating oysters with spicy sauce on the city square. Reggae is spilling from the air. Oh dear, you are dreaming. The radio is playing and your mouth is moving as you awaken to the tune In the sky is a guitar. In your lover’s arms, an ocean of notes like Christmas. The sun comes up slowly. You are singing. Your drink tastes of hot sauce. You are brewing sweet tea. Music like sugar pours out of the salt ocean. There’s  a melodic clatter of shells on the floor of your car. The doe in the road knows you. Her eyes resemble you lover’s. You are strumming his arm. He sings along.

    Nothing eloquent in the tobacco stains that will never resemble sumptuous berry rubies ripening clean on the branch,   his fingers, like stubs, burnt bumblebees crushed. I bury my chin in his beard harsh smoke, stiff scaffolding. Parody in longing for a brittle touch. Hideous proximity to the addiction. Song of the shortened life. Love of the kick. Excerpted from  The Shape of Caught Water available from Red Mountain Press or directly from the author: covelli@cybermesa.com http://redmountainpress.us/

somehwere i have never travelled,gladly beyond any experience,your eyes have their silence: in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me, or which i cannot touch because they are too near your slightest look easily will unclose me though i have closed myself as fingers, you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens (touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose or if your wish be to close me,i and my life will shut very beautifully,suddenly, as when the heart of this flower imagines the snow carefully everywhere descending; nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals the power of your intense fragility: whose texture compels me with the colour of its countries, rendering death and forever with each breathing (i do not know what it is about you that closes and opens;only something in me understands the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses) nobody,not even the rain, has such small hands e.e.cummings

Tray of sun. Little ball of fur. We tend to these animals as if our bodies             sprawled. On carpet. Tray of fur. Little ball of sun.

                                   In the back lot is a broad-shouldered truck father to a sleeker figure with fins You have graduated to walking                         (or sailing an electric model with no sound) but the workhorse of your boyhood is patient                         longing parade watchers recall                         the boulevard (though small) of the quarterback, the professor, and the lifeguard Your ears showed then and the cleft in your chin yet it’s the softness in your eyes, headlights, ...