The Blind Painter
And in a dream there they all were, the works
He would have done, with time, hung on a wall.
In one, an arm, crucified, bled with turps,
Elsewhere a child, radiant, before the fall.
Framed by receding pillars under dusk,
Pinks and greens of flesh, holding up the night—
How had these colors come? Bright, bitter, brusque,
Smeared palimpsest of blood on bone. What light
Glowed this vision like uncreated gleam?
He had always been a copyist merely,
Faithful servant of nature’s modest stream.
Eating cold suppers, paying tax yearly.
Here now in the dark a wilder spirit,
But ghost, and dim, he could not draw near it.
Dog-Walking
What is eternity to the dog, who
Lives in joy and in between knows only
Timeless waiting. So unlike our lonely
Foresight, which grasps at making all things new,
And caged by furtive futures badly seen.
For him, there is only scent of rabbit,
Voice of the beloved, dance of maggot,
Song of rotted bones, deaf to Holocene.
Storm-blessed: boughs blizzard-bent to proper height,
Canine kingdom finally come. White doors
In white. Bend to follow in his delight
Where granite-altared copse and flakes in flight
Gift life freely from time’s once fastened drawers.
All made new. World again and always right.
April Fools
“My greatest trick,” you said, one year later,
Or maybe two—time being liquid then—
And you meant not love, that great dictator,
But the lack of fear you felt, even when
You could not know where the snow would bear us.
As it happened it could not bear us home,
That land we never had, but held in trust
And gifted to the river’s icy foam—
Your wound you knew, I had to borrow mine.
It took the shape of thick molasses, sweet
And dark and slow and mixed with blood and wine.
Years later now, scraped with age, when we meet
You tell me everything you’ve seen, your voice
Still young, still hurt, still waiting to rejoice.