ROBERT
KELLY

The ointments,
the oils called essential
because they bear
the essences of their origin,
flower, sap, wounded tree
or musk of beast, and these
she brings to such a quiet desk
and writes with them
into tiny vials or just dabs
some on her wrist and raises
it to me sometimes
so I can read it too
the essences interwoven
in a new odor never before
smelled in this green world–
her magic of weaving
ancient ointments into
the utterly fresh and new.
You see why I call what
she does writing–and each
new scent deserves a name
and sometimes hours later
it will say itself in a dark room.

1 April 2023

Sanctuary, symmetry,
the woman brought
the mountain home with her
the way they do,

the way they do,
geology is one long song.
we learn to sing it
not just with our legs,
clouds explain canyons,
the lake explains the sky,

deep strata of uncounted years
specify this rock wall,
anticline by river, road
a blasphemy through solid rock.

2.
She brought the mountain home
and held it on her knee,

take care of things
the crows kept saying, the way
they do to wake us, make us
do the right thing,

now wake
the stone they cawed
and she did. So quiet
for so hard a thing it spoke,
said its name, said clear
soft things about sleep and time
and who am I and who are you
before she let it fall sleep again–
its long work not nearly done.

1 April 2023

Why is American money green,
what does it tell us
about our dreams?
Green is peaceful and
soft permission,
quiet Sundays after Pentecost,
moss on gravestones, merry eyes
of Scottish girls and tiger cubs.
Be green as you can
the dollar tells us,
I am the first President
and there is no other.

1 April 2023

                            Mel dat rosa apibus

All the vowels
and a star.
The give of things
made clear, all sweet and slow
in the loveliest places,
roses from the East,
beware the stings.

The rose gives honey to the bees
it said. It takes much longer
to say what it means.

The alchemical maxim woke me,
I tried to let the pillow stifle it
but words will have their way.
And which star? Did it mean
all the words breathed out
through its vowels, Ishtar,
Tara, a star?
                                                           I thought of Duncan
walking with Levi up 19th Street,
poet on the young poet’s arm,
the honey of his speech
never pausing long,
the sweetness is the accurate
is what he meant,
what it means,

                                                                                  I thought
of alchemy again, of all the meanings wrought
we still don’t fully understand,
yes, what this meant in the soul
and this in the love-life, yes,
and this in the test tube, yes,
and this in neurons, blood,
bone.
                                   And the bees still feed on
what they feed us
and the rose still thorns,
hands and birds be careful,
the rose still sports its heraldry
in vases on lovers’ tables, yes,

and honey bears the secret
healing powers of the place
itself in which its flowers grew
the bees gathered, ripened,
the place we share,
                                                                      we still
can bring it home in glass jars
and heal our subtler maladies
if we know how, hint, hint,
Hahnemann, hint, hint Dr. Jung.

So much of what we do
endangers bees,
O cure the bees of us,
this disease we sometimes are
even to the simplest flower,

we think they’re simple.
Winter now, and no bee flies.
And before the alchemists even
the poet said Quando
ver venit meum?
And when does my spring come?

1 December 2022

All I want to do
is what a mountain does,
connect earth with the sky
to let the living ones of both
rise up and come down to us.
Beloved readers,
we build with the same stone.

4 December 2022

Every staircase
leads into a museum.
Fact. Even the steps
up from the subway
lead into this diorama
called here and now,
the unseen curators
forever changing the display.
And in this old house
of yours or mine
we climb the stairs
to where dreams are stored.

7 December 2022