HEART THREAD Parts Ninety and Ninety-One

90.
There is a certain subtext to
humanity
they would never occupy this hill
this boulevard to heaven though I
have seen
the shapes of them more luminous than
light
sometimes by the Dogana or any
sea-touched hand
land they walk even when they’re
standing still
the form before form is a gasp in the
mind
to see such absolute a shape
dissolving matter
once you have seen such things you
can’t lose
ghost girls of the Janiculum laugh in
the cypress
a tree is left from their investigations
a doorway full of light that natural
house. 
91.
Venus as the bride of Christ he
taught
and every book their wedding gift
forlorn as a block of marble never
carved
insatiable as apple trees he offered
her
all the comparisons a likeness is a
kiss
sudden stranger on a midnight bus
nowhere in Nebraska the one I never
if they don’t live here they don’t
live anywhere
to know truth a little is to know the
heart
who knows the picture that was never on
my wall
I was afraid of images nothing else can
wound.

HEART THREAD Parts Eighty-Seven and Eighty-Eight

87.
Roar of the mirror whine of the hedge
ask nothing of me, disturb less than
one word does
noise left and right unending
no more nuisance really than the fish
in the sea
when I sit and look at surf rolling
in
as if I were part of something even
this
Battle of Actium before me surf
creams on shingle
Antony impaled and Cleo’s left breast
toxic-nibbled
and all the lovely stories end at
once
I spent my whole childhood believing
and childhood never manages to end
the waves her pure right breast, and
go weep.
88.
And have nothing to do but this
in the comfy prison of reality
no more work to do but make time pass
change the names of all those wicked
places
salt marsh no hay a bracelet of
Whitby jet
I went there for the sky the wet
horizon
timothy grass belonging from black
mud
weathered narrow boardwalk over muck
a thousand birds and only there ever
alone
and no room left to plant the lettuce
barely room for dancing with
Valkyries
high above the north sky where once a
city is.  

HEART THREAD Parts Eighty-Five and Eighty-Six

85.
Every page is precious especially the
blank
the story here is her round face her
round eyes wet
nothing more to say hence ready to
begin again
a man is a wheel on a mountain road
I’m talking tantra but to an empty
room
xenolith they built the structure on
as if to say
earth gives us something like a day
where is nurture in all this where is
Bernini
the woman shape that taught us how to
pray
boys in the clouds hair comes through
the hat
the sun moves secretly from house to
house
but no one knows the father.
86.
The breeze knows these
legends of the mother-house
her hands pressed firmly on the
territory
noises annoy her most
no one’s children clattering in grass
and in the sky they mow the clouds
the mother-house is guilty of the sun
she made it cooked it over pine cones
in her cave
till it glowed ardent hell and
hydrogen
then she sent it to the sky to
measure us
mind us little children and a rock
she spat up too
to light our nights from tryst to
tryst.

HEART THREAD Parts Eighty-Three and Eighty-Four

83.
The square root of someone else lives
in your mind
curious behavior of measured things
caught the comfort from the cushion
and sold it to the skin
of course I want to anyone would but
I don’t will it
if I willed it heaven and earth would
have to comply
will makes you crazy wanting makes
you sane
we live decently when we recognize
our lack
a child is all waiting
how came you from so far and still a
citizen
woke before the birds again still
never alone
boat humming in weather of the mind
Mozart love-hate flute I want to kiss
his sister too.
84.
Time is the dimension in which we
unwrap space
we and only we there is no time apart
from us
distinguish shade from shadow
one of them licks your hands
to be poor is to be burdened with
memory
the doctor waiting on the porch alone
with the wind
not many people do it anymore the
young the very old
he opened his mouth and Persephone
spoke
language is the mouthpiece of another
the strangest thing about the caves
is that we think we’re out of them
this is the Dordogne the dream time
Athabaskan wilderness men with eyes
of a wolf.

HEART THREAD Parts Eighty-One and Eighty-Two

81.
Just looking out the window I have no
window
so you have to pull the sound of
words apart
to guess the moonlight through
you’re riding on a ram up Mount
Erigal
the three moons of folklore roll up
beside you
slower than gravity, the earth cries
resist me if you dare, outmoded
primate
mere folk, graverobbers, oilsuckers
foible-witted blank-hearted
market-minded
lip-serve liturgists flower-fondlers
bird-handlers
cow-killers ocean-sievers
word-wasters
swooning philosophers, heartbreakers,
men. 
82.
Picus four woodpeckers next door
pileated fledglings
no’j day of the woodpecker probe for knowledge be a girl
the things the weather tells us
Marx for breakfast Aquinas for high
tea sleep fasting
nothing matters but matter doesn’t
know it
materials seem as if there were some
other
language told me to be silent in so
many words
read this as commentary on Book VIII of the Aeneid
upriver journey into your own country
never seen before
your new arrival in yourself sunglare
on windshield
I have something to tell you you have
to tell me what it is
space between self and other shaped
by two dreams.