from POEM For Laia-Rose, Before You Were Born

For sweet descent of song I appeal to what
Springs forth from space before the birth
Of light this site of wonder before any fact where the moon
Becomes an oracular skin a frontier of touch
Unfathomed fleece this period of grace when time
Suspends and the airs of some orison
Arouse one I conceive when I sing yr name and invent
A sky like a face before yr face finds breath I breathe

This spirit who quiets the noise of all my ghosts
The way a breeze moves thru yr vowels it rustles
A veil between worlds & opens this place rid of cover
Where mourning resolves and love begins
Again in the beam of day this trance you incite
A poem that moves in advance of every
Intention here where sound & sense collide
In song without needing to move under shield

Of nite or noon you exceed my system o lily umbrella
My jujube pub when everything’s naked there’s no
- thing to hide under blanket or screen no secreting tide
My awakening goose my old slippery bee
I’ve fallen for you in this bowl of a tree and my fall
Is a cushion tho it could be a bulb or a pretty prune pie
Or the very same jug waving radish & steam
The way meanings emerge free of my aim

In the form of a song that will hold you so close
Here in this place where a spotted owl throws
Her shadows on the furrows of dream tracing shapes
Of new feeling on the morning
Side of sleep I wake with yr name still on my lips
So defiant a geometry a whole architecture
Rippling in scenes of inlaid wood & tapering silk a shelter
Against the wind where whatever difference

Hangs between a veil & a breeze evanesces like a vapor
Yr name being both the gauze and the gust
Fanning thru its porous skin where my ego bursts
& my feelings expand beyond memory & wish be
- yond Pluto’s blush you lead me past limits of what I imagine
When I imagine a world emptied of ghosts or one
Flooded with names unrequited by whatever the names
Absent and this remarks the same condition

The one yr name now forgives and heals it reminds me
Of our power to make the world resemble the other
One the one we want by undoing this imitation & building
A world transfigured by our desires & loves
Our actions & spirits like the ones who become us
As y’ve become me already living in letters
Whose roots go so deep and whose crowns reach high
These signs that augur a more hospitable place