Ghosts of Christmas Past

We stood at the edge of midnight

all standstill and not quite caress,

steepled in truncated desire

in that winter resonance

      of Austrian hush

just before the church bells rang.

Nineteen and twenty-one -- 

children, really,

though we imagined ourselves

agelessly mature

in our conversations of 
Neitzsche's Will to Power

and the archetypes of Carl Jung.

Now you still drink too much,

I still sing lonely love songs

into a different pitch-dark night.

Do you remember, too,

that long-ago, snow-covered escapade?

The way our breath billowed before us?

My heart-stopping dance,

sliding backward

into black-ice streets?

Ghosts before us revisited

Ghosts before us

   With thanks to Joseph Massey

        And Lorine Niedecker

We dance as through a fog,

see only clearly

the fine lines of our hands

held before us

to keep the totality of our being

from falling into

misted loves,

to halt the dizzy immersion

into the felt but not yet seen.

Though our hearts call to them,

and our steps

         long for the pathway

                     to their souls,

we make out only

the shadowy after-birth

of those we wish to fully love,

with each blind step

   we lean toward

        that which lies beyond

only to find our hopeful embrace

empties into mist,

leaves us fingering

the wispy residue of our longing.

Anticipation

It's this grey sky
and the ocean,
churning beneath
the northwest wind
that put me in this mood:
waiting for a phone-call
or the sound of your van
crunching onto our gravel drive.

I have to remind myself
it is neither a lack in me
that makes you silent, unavailable,
nor my inner beauty that brings you here
after such long absence;
but merely your own wishes.

Our connection once ran deep
as the currents beneath
this roiling sea  --
unfathomable, chilling.

Though you will say it's nothing more
than sex we're missing,
I know better.

NICU

Do not let them die

those fragile dream babies.

Feed them on your hospiced hopes,
swaddle their broken hearts
with your blankets
of patient practice;
persistent attention.
Let them breathe
of your hopeful hungers

also your sacred skeptics,

as they suckle on memories 
of cratered connections,

forge new and vital bonds

mirror the rhythmic beating --

the open, 
close, 
open --
of your hallowed heart.