Perhaps he sang a song,
We never heard
And if he did
In silent voice
–so far, so near—
The waves of soundless sound
Turned from the wall
Of our resistant inner ear,
And like the Little Prince
In a lonely desert
Vanishing without a trace,
Left us bereft
Strangely inconsolable
Yearning for some unknown
Some perfect word
Perhaps he sang a song
We should have heard
I wandered
In that time of sorrow
Through strange and haunted lands.
I pondered
Ways that I might borrow
Peace the heart demands.
I squandered
On a false tomorrow
Tears on foreign strands.
(after reading The Women of Brewster Place)
The dark-skinned black-eyed women
Live and love
In the walled street of Brewster Place
Abandoned, often bereft,
their mother-natures nurture
both good and bad
Tears are seldom seen
or even shed
but anger slowly rising
spills over like water
when the tap is turned
and left
In the relentless heated hours
along Brewster Place
hope slowly rots
like the discarded apple cores
at the open doorways
Or, conversely, swells
in pregnant ballooning ways
Life in ebb and flow,
washes through the bricks
of Brewster Place
its blood pulse:
Day night night day
When the sun, heat-heavy
hovering, finally sets
and darkness descends
on Brewster Place
Arnheim, a perfect reality
A fairy-train that moved us
Beyond mountains
And sleeping hurricanes
And memory takes us backward
On the path to our last wild mountains
And sleeping hurricanes.
Love, Love
None are so lonely
As a mother
Upon whom the sun has fallen
To cast a shadow in the son.
On starlit night
of silver moon
I dance
But
I dance
only for those
who chance to stray
into the mystery of moon-mist way
He fled
The bounds mundane of Earth
To follow lustrous stars
October nights
Strange and wild
And roam in Arnheim