Dissolving Clouds

I have been dissolving clouds today,
just picking them out of the blue,
my will a feather that strokes them
softly into oblivion, gently out of sky.

A trick I learned from gnarled old wizards
having no practical application
in the realm of regular life, unless
you consider essential this letting go
of something no longer needed.

Releasing a cloud makes azure
openings where fresh cumulus can come
newly made babies at the world’s nipple,
newly made snowflakes in your face.
I have no idea what I am doing, or why.

Quasimodo's Dream

"Why was I not made of stone, like thee?" ---The Hunchback of Notre Dame


Before I awoke with a smile
on my silly Quasimodo mouth,
I had a dream about Esmeralda.

The gypsy girl was eating barbecue
with her fingers all red and delicious
with her body all soft and delightful.

This is our cathedral but it isn’t Notre Dame.
There are no raucous bells here on the mountain,
only a squirrel slowly eating seeds in the silent dusk.

There is such peace here, far away from the angry village,
peace and impossible passion like a soundtrack, played
softly behind Esmeralda’s playful, dancing eyes.

Before I awoke with a smile
on my silly Quasimodo mouth,
I had a dream about Esmeralda.

Remembering Hands

A heartsick evening not far from now
you, and I know I will remember hands:
fingers that fondled instead nearby things
because the warm wonder of these fingers
could never be touched, because they were inches
and also somehow long miles away:
a man much too full of drinking you and full
of himself and far too empty, all at once
and a sacrament of smoke dissolving into a starless sky:
neon everywhere eating planets from the night
in that asphalt appetite a humming city has
to swallow everything primal and green.

Taking a Prisoner

Until all my careless clues
trigger a police fax of the photo
from my driver’s license
and a copy of this poem from the web ---
I could keep her tied and hydrated,
feeding all her favorites, spooning
soft foods into her snarling lips:
banana compote, strawberries and cream.
So romantic it would be ---
just the two of us.
I would feed her every dream
except her dream of standing
on her own unbound feet and walking away ---
unlike those Chinese women whose insteps
were uselessly twisted by their masculine masters;
they so admired the beauty of a captive female.

A more conventional marriage could, long ago,
have satisfied this hunger for human closeness.
I could have imprisoned one of my stunning butterflies,
her bright blue wings legally pinned into a lovely
concrete block home near the good schools ---
until the fight had forever gone out of her.
I could have given her another tiny butterfly
to attend: emerged from the same jade chrysalis as this,
our wedded bliss. A beautiful little fluttering creature,
born into captivity, will never know the taste of the open sky.

While standing in a freezing mountain stream,
with the sun beginning to sink yellow
into the water rushing around my knees,
I muscle a shivering rainbow trout from the rapids.
Her silver side is painted neon pink and lavender.
I hold her terror tightly between my rough hands.
She looks at me like the doom I seem to be,
her mouth moving soundlessly in some silver
language I have never learned, but comprehend.
This is a being too gorgeous to kill.
Before her spirit drains between my fingers,
I give her back to the river.
I give my longing itself back to the rushing river.