Poetry:

        Taking Up Collecting

           for Wilder Kathleen

When you were as young
as a song about to be sung
there was a sound you always made
reinventing the word wow
when first you met
a living thing
of a new and different order
Whatever carried the invisible flickering
A dog or a seagull
A tree or a twist
of moving water
Now I wish I had saved
all the silences
that followed those cries
and kept them in old vest pockets
like long forgotten movie tickets
or grandfathers' watches handed down
Little silences
attached to
thin gold chains
to help me tell time
after I am gone

 

            Quiet

for Wilder Kathleen

In the hours before dawn
our bodies are drinking stored-up light
and reassembling it as water
So do all memories begin
Upon awakening
the rippling flanks of horses
pass across your face
taking the form of day

      

                          Some Detectives

                       for Wilder Kathleen

Your mother came to me
with the lingeringest of lips
Half-thoughtful and half-wild
A girl who liked to tango with the tides
When she awakened she remembered almost everything
The slow velvet lingerie of moss
pleasuring the branches of a tree
The giggle of water when a fish goes by
Wine putting roots down in music
But there was a single blind spot in her sleep
She didn't know where to find you
She let me stay close to her
as long as I agreed to help her look
Actually
I thought she was helping me
I too had been seeking you
ever since my earliest days
Seen your face reflected in a raindrop
on a petal but when I looked again
the depths of a rose returned the world to me
dazzling but impoverished
Heard your voice but couldn't get that station back
though I twirled the dial until it broke off in my fingers
Neither of us dared leave the other alone
for fear they would discover you and vanish
So we kept each other within arm's reach
Dancing and searching the dark places
We developed elaborate codes
Fell in with criminals
Followed the instructions of train smoke
Arranged rendezvous at the crossroads
We stole the identities of our own dice
after rubbing them against ancient movie stars for luck
We looked beyond life and outside of time
Life was of no consequence
except as a place to play
But a map whose folds are in two worlds at once
can be hard to read
There were quarrels between us, wars, ambushes, double-crosses, dog-fights
We kept dancing
Sometimes
when our leads had dried up
and our hunches got us nowhere
I'd get tired of looking
Your features had grown indistinct
I could barely make them out in a turning leaf
Your voice
threaded through the surf
I mistook for summer lightning
But your mother always knew
you were headed our way
Nearer each day the farther
she opened her hope of you
A terrifying hope that scalded my eyes
A hope I could not hope to equal
Looking was how she waited
I see that now
It's better when you move
and dancing was her way of saying
The darkness is made of singers
who cannot tell water from love
So your mother danced
indefatigably
and I held on for dear life
By now
the day we found you was years ago
And watching you dance
in front of the television to the Rolling Stones
It finally occurs to me
that you were always dancing with us
Waiting and looking in two worlds at once
I saw your mother make these steps
and thought she was whiling away the time
But the two of you were whiling it into being
Some detectives we turned out to be