The garden like a green
and bronze goddess loves
zucchini this year but will
not give us cucumbers.
She does as she pleases.
Purple beans but no yellows.
Serve me, she whispers,
maybe I will give you tomatoes,
or maybe I will hatch into
thousands of green caterpillars
maybe I will grow only bindweed,
joe-pye weed and dandelions.
All gardeners worship weather
and luck. We begin in compost
and end in decay. The life
of one is the death of the other.
Beetles eat squash plant. Bird
eats beetle. Soil eats all.
Eclipse at the solstice
New moon and the hottest sun:
It should be the day of the triumphant
sun marching like a red elephant
up the lapis arch of sky.
The moon is invisible, shy,
almost wounded. She draws
the thin short darkness around her
like a torn dress.
Then in the fat of the afternoon
she slides over the sun
enveloping him. I have
conquered, she croons,
brought darkness and put the birds
to sleep, raised the twilight wind.
But then his corona shines
around her and she sees.
You really are a lion with mane
of white fire, you beauty. So
she gives him the day back,
slowly, and lets him roar.
The rain as wine
It is a ripe rain
coming down in big fat drops
like grapes dropping on the roof—
white grapes round as moons.
It is coming in waves
whooshing through the trees.
Silvery, intimate, it softens
and washes the parched air.
It falls on my face
like a blessing.
It sweetens my body
rolling down my upstretched arms.
The rain blesses us
as it opens the cracked earth
as it opens us to itself:
the sweet gush of August rain.
Taconic at midnight
At eleven we headed home, north
on the Taconic Parkway to the Mass Pike,
a mild late September night with fog
drifting in great hanks like white Spanish
moss, wavering in translucent
banners across the narrow highway,
diffusing moonlight, deflecting our beams.
Almost at once we began to see them:
deer congregated on each side where
the woods opened, dozens in a clearing,
bucks in the road, does milling about.
We drove slower and slower, inching
past, steering among them who ignored
our intrusion. They were intent
on each other, for this gathering
was a mating mart like a mixer:
but they were serious, examining
each other with desperate attention,
an air of silky sexy tension roiling
like the fog that sank and lifted
bedazzling their sleek flanks,
their shaking antlers. The road
did not belong. It should have been
rolled up like a bale of wire and stowed,
for this was a night of the ancient gods
when America floated on the turtle’s back
and all things were still pristine
as the lucent brown eye of a virgin doe.
The equinox rush
The swan heads south in the night sky.
Overhead, the sharp white triangle
of Altair, Deneb and Vega prickles.
At dawn there is a hint of frost,
only etched on the truck down
at the foot of the drive.
A sharp shinned hawk eyes
chickadees at the feeder, swoops.
That afternoon over High Head
I see two more hawks passing
missile lean, hurrying before
a wind I cannot feel.
Everything quickens. Squirrels
rush to feed. Monarchs among
the milkweed raggedly zigzag
for the final harvest, too early
to mulch and protect, too soon
to take off the screens, still
some sharp corner has been turned.
I am stirred to finish something.
A hint of cold frames the moment
and compresses it. Urgency
is the drug of the day.
Find a task and do it, the red
of the Virginia creeper warns.
The sunset is a brushfire.
I am hurrying, I am running hard
toward I don’t know what,
but I mean to arrive before dark.
Seder with comet
The comet was still hanging in the sky
that year at Pesach, and of course
the full moon, as every year.
After the bulk of the seder, after
the long rich redolent meal, we all
went out on the road walking away
from the house whose lights we had
dimmed. There on the velvet playing
field of night we saw the moon rolling
toward us like a limestone millwheel
the whole sky pouring to fill our heads
a little drunk with the sweet wine
so that the stars sank in with a whisper
like a havdalah candle doused in wine
giving a little electric buzz to the brain.
Then we saw it, the comet like the mane
of a white lion, something holy to mark
this one more Passover with all of us
together, my old commune mates, friends
from here and the city, children I have known
since birth, all standing with our faces turned
up like pale sunflowers to the icy fire.
Then we went back to the house, drank
the last cup and sang till we were hoarse.
The cameo
My only time in Naples
the day we went to Pompeii
street sellers had them: big fine cameos
just like the one my grandma
left to me, a brooch. Seeing them
was finding a footprint in the street:
her small feet like my mother’s
had passed here with her great
sophisticated love. Her rabbi
father married them on his deathbed.
They left Russia under a load of straw
a price on his head, no papers.
In Naples he sold his gold
watch to buy them passports
taking the name Bunin, after
the writer he admired.
What will you do in America?
the anarchist seller asked.
Make a revolution, he declaimed.
So he got a good price.
Off to Ellis Island, where the
immigration inspector added
an extra n and let them slip
in, Grandma secretly pregnant
under her too big black dress.
She insisted on mourning her father
though her husband objected.
But she kept her long chestnut
hair against custom, to please
him, who said such glory should
never be sacrificed, and any angels
tempted would have to come through
him. She did not know yet
he would be unfaithful, give her
eleven children to raise in squalor,
make no revolution but organize
unions, be killed by Pinkertons.
In Naples she danced through exotic
dangerous streets on his arm, proud
he could speak Italian and bargain
not only for passports cheap
but carved head and shoulders of a fine
looking woman he said resembled
her, and she was pleased although
already she did not believe him.
Miriam’s cup
This cup of fresh water on the seder table at Pesach represents the well of Miriam, Moses’ older sister who gave water to the children of Israel through the desert until her death. It compliments the traditional cup of Eliyahu.
The cup of Eliyahu holds wine;
the cup of Miriam holds water.
Wine is more precious
until you have no water.
Water that flows in our veins,
water that is the stuff of life
for we are made of breath
and water, vision
and fact. Eliyahu is
the extraordinary; Miriam
brings the daily wonders:
the joy of a fresh morning
a white linen cloth on which
nothing has yet spilled.
The descent into the heavy
waters of sleep healing us.
The scent of baking bread,
roasted chicken, fresh herbs,
the faces of friends across
the table. What sustains us
every morning, every evening,
the common miracles
like the taste of cool water.
Dignity
Near the end of your life you regard
me with a gaze clear and lucid
saying simply, I am, I will not be.
How foolish to imagine animals
don’t comprehend death. Old
cats study it like a recalcitrant mouse.
You seek out warmth for your bones
close now to the sleek coat
that barely wraps them,
little knobs of spine, the jut
of hip bones, the skull
my fingers lightly caress.
Sometimes in the night you cry:
a deep piteous banner of gone
desire and current sorrow,
the fear that the night is long
and hungry and you pace
among its teeth feeling time
slipping through you cold and
slick. If I rise and fetch you back
to bed, you curl against me purring
able to grasp pleasure by the nape
even inside pain. Your austere
dying opens its rose of ash.
Old cat crying
The old cat stands on the flagstone
path through the herb garden,
crying, crying. She has what
the vet calls cognitive
dysfunction, as will we all
as will we all.
She is crying for the companion
who always came to her
from the time he drank
her milk, with whom she slept
four sharp ears from one
grey cushion of fur.
He should not have died
before her. She cries
for him to come. She
sniffed his body and knew
but she has forgotten
and he does not come.
I hold her and it is my
past I mourn, my mother,
lovers, friends whom
I shall never again summon
and the future’s empty
silent rooms.
Traveling dream
I am packing to go to the airport
but somehow I am never packed.
I keep remembering more things
I keep forgetting.
Secretly the clock is bolting
forward ten minutes at a click
instead of one. Each time
I look away, it jumps.
Now I remember I have to find
the cats. I have five cats
even when I am asleep.
One is on the bed and I slip
her into the suitcase.
One is under the sofa. I
drag him out. But the tabby
in the suitcase has vanished.
Now my tickets have run away.
Maybe the cat has my tickets.
I can only find one cat.
My purse has gone into hiding.
Now it is time to get packed.
I take the suitcase down.
There is a cat in it but no clothes.
My tickets are floating in the bath
tub full of water. I dry them.
One cat is in my purse
but my wallet has dissolved.
The tickets are still dripping.
I look at the clock as it leaps
forward and see I have missed
my plane. My bed is gone now.
There is one cat the size of a sofa.
Kamasutra for dummies
Years ago I had a lover who got bored.
He liked a challenge. I was
too easily pleased to fluff his ego.
He bought a manual. We would
work our way through the positions.
Work is the operant word. I remember
his horny toenails and ripe feet
either side of my eyes and cheeks.
I remember arching my back
like a cat, the ache just looming.
In some positions his prick slipped
out every other stroke and he would
curse. It was sensual as those videos
to flatten your abs or firm your buttocks
where three young women whose abs
are flat as floorboards grin like rigor
mortis as they demonstrate some
overpriced 800 number device.
They never sweat. But we did.
We used chairs. And tables and stools.
Always the manual was open beside us
guiding our calisthenics. Spontaneous
as a concession speech, exciting
as a lecture on actuarial tables
he staked my quivering libido through
its smoking heart. The night he wanted
to try it standing with me upsidedown
I left him hanging from the door
and whoosh, zoomed off like a rabid bat
to find someone who actually liked sex.
The first time I tasted you
The first time I tasted you I thought
strange: metallic, musty, with salt
and cinnamon, the sea
and the kitchen
safety and danger.
The second time I tasted you I thought
known: already known,
perhaps in an oasis of dream
in the desert of a hard night
the dry wind parching me.
I tasted the fruit of a tree
that promised not life
but love, the knowledge
of being known at last
down to my gnarly pit.
What we know and don’t
of each other goes on
a voyage not infinite
but long enough, notching
years on our bones.
From your body I eat
and drink all I will ever
know of passionate love
from now till death
drains the chalice.
Colors passing through us
Purple as tulips in May, mauve
into lush velvet, purple
as the stain blackberries leave
on the lips, on the hands,
the purple of ripe grapes
sunlit and warm as flesh.
Every day I will give you a color,
like a new flower in a bud vase
on
your desk. Every day
I will paint you, as women
color each other with henna
on hands and on feet.
Red as henna, as cinnamon,
as coals after the fire is banked,
the cardinal in the feeder,
the roses tumbling on the arbor
their weight bending the wood
the red of the syrup I make from their petals.
Orange as the perfumed fruit
hanging their globes on the glossy tree,
orange as pumpkins in the field,
orange as butterflyweed and the monarchs
who come to eat it, orange as my
cat running lithe through the high grass.
Yellow as a goat’s wise and wicked eyes,
yellow as a hill of daffodils,
yellow as dandelions by the highway,
yellow as butter and egg yolks,
yellow as a school bus stopping you,
yellow as a slicker in a downpour.
Here is my bouquet, here is a sing
song of all the things you make
me think of, here is oblique
praise for the height and depth
of you and the width too.
Here is my box of new crayons at your feet.
Green as mint jelly, green
as a frog on a lily pad twanging,
the green of cos lettuce upright
about to bolt into opulent towers,
green as Grande Chartreuse in a clear
glass, green as wine bottles.
Blue as cornflowers, delphiniums,
bachelor’s buttons. Blue as Roquefort,
blue as Saga. Blue as still water.