Surfacing Night

I don’t release you    
Shadow twin, unbearable chimera    
You are still    
The knot    
Gathering the hoop of my heart    
Straining in a tea cup    
Behind the mirror    
Your hands lean into mind      
Pressing the meniscus    
Out of black earth a green fuse      
Brave, dumb rudderless,    
Turning me to hear      
The rumble      
     
The rumble of wheels on rutted track    
Below the bed of this wagon      
Jolting rocking seasick aching    
Where I awakened bound face down    
Wrapped in burlap and straw      
A flood of comforting sound      
Playing muffled like blind fingers      
Painting the mien of the other world    
In a score I try to scribe.    
I remember the woman, cordbound to her piano    
Ripped out of the lurching dinghy     
Dragged down to clutching green deeps    
By her instrument    
Looking up at the surging surface  
Silvered bubbles rising from her fingers, lips and keys.    
     
My sweet    
You can’t fire me sudden, I am    
A musket,      
A tasseled purse of seed,      
A clay pot tipped from the third story window   
To scatter alley cats mousing below    
A Chinese dragon kite tearing zigzag upward    
Threatening to snap the line    
Streaming swooping, ripping arcs in the sky    
A scimitar slicing your canvas sail    
Fierce, huge waggling brows    
Eyes in surprise      
Armies of spiked, baring teeth    
Bobbing weaving dipping    
My talons pierce leather; enter your falconer’s arm      
I am the shot over your bow    
A brow raised reminding    
...No escaping who we are....  
     
My line pings back in your high wire    
In pulsing Morse a score of vast field    
Am I plying your sea?    
Taking hostile purchase in your field with windborne seed?    
Climbing bruising winds above your plain,    
Dipping and pulling frantic    
I am telegraphing you, Windtalker code.    
     
Your debris falls meteoric down      
Hot needles thread the envelope of my heart    
Glowing chunks blown from your molten core    
Thud on my rooftop in sleep    
Burning spewn lava tunnels    
Riddling every story of my carebuilt home    
Dropping to basement, subbasement, bedrock    
Your raze my stick towns in seeded fire    
You sow my life with rocketbottle messages      
You burrow, smolder, spread under moss    
Rise to firestorm every fort, every compound,      
Each Babel I have built.      
     
Look up    
Fierce in charcoal sky      
My backbone beats and bears wings    
 I am the archangel’s scarecrow    
The better to scare my beggar soul and you    
Hot as a dying child comet    
Sad as bearded Father Twilight    
Thieving as the pool-eyed matchstick girl    
With less to lose, more to kindle    
Maudlin as a leaky rotted plum    
My web of kindling bone and paper skin    
Is a kamikaze screeching ball of burning owl feathers   
Unguided, aimed at you.    
     
Without your cupping hands    
I don’t pour like welcome steaming tea    
I don’t warm chilled hands, fortify the heart    
I run,      
I overrun my banks and yours    
Blood without host    
Ruby drops denied your pursed mouth drop,   
Bead like pearling quicksilver  
Easier to follow in stirring forest moonlight  
Than a breadcrumb trail      
I don’t dissolve, forgiveness and reminder on your Catholic tongue    
You are ensnared by glimpses of beautiful possible      
Despite your closed lips and upturned gaze  
I am reflected, your pooling pupils plead bleedingheart sorrow  
Betrayed you are, they leap toward me; they just can't lie.  
Through sulfur steam singing rising off the surface    
At night you see the twisting shape dancing, telling    
In the whispering brew    
You would like to see it as evil, unreal    
Shapes of me living beneath the sensible good daylight    
Home with shapes of you.    
     
You refuse every morning, so faithful     
But too late!  I hear your remembrance,      
Before your daylight door swings to  
Before my back is facing you,   
I climb out of our pool, dipped in white  
You swim to the onyx granite edge  
You feet treading above our canyons deep   
Shoulder up arms flex, water streaming,  
Hands on stone, one foot, then two  
Leaving our dark quarry waters beneath,    
 
One foot, two, on solid ground, both heads down    
My chimera-mime, your lost sister twin    
We drip, tracking bits of elixir    
Our toes touch, step for step,      
And nearly nerve to nerve    
But for the thin meniscus skin.    
Wasted in the dirt again.    
Night’s memory means to run      
Like beading mercury    
She thinks, I'll roll north  
Sweeping soot from her temples    
Feather ash from her breast    
There’s always an underground railroad idling    
A locomotive ready, waiting.    
     
Pulled home to a lodestone    
I am nerarly sorry,    
Our currents must cross, wires touch.    
The jolt zings all day      
Like thunderheads lining the far curve of earth, advancing    
The wild mustangs and slight sparrows know it's coming, electric,    
Swooping stampeding rising unison    
Turning fast returning, in a panicked synchronous flowing flock.    
I stay ungrounded, unsafe, riveted enthralled  
The taste of metal sets me apart, I am avoided, marked  
I am showing, growing like an oyster the waxing pearl of storm    
The distant silver flash, thrill runs up my spine.    
   
It is you who gently moves away, only to turn back!      
Returning, circling, restless purring    
Your patient needy heatprint pressed against my nightshell  
The warmed impression where you've slept right there,      
A cat curled light and tight about me all night    
Unbound, moon after moon.    
You’re no captive    
You’re a wandering Tom    
Torn ears, kneading claws, heavy veteran      
Lumbering head laid on my chest,  
Whiskers messsaging for you,      
Rumbling resigned every day.    
     
In the morning again and again      
Shot to the surface I aim up,      
Swim toward shifting facet light      
Sharpen my blade for the fray    
My whetstone is your goodbye      
The salt water of night      
Presses against my eyes      
Fills my chest squeezing    
Streams cool through my hair    
I wait on the blinding gasp of air    
You stay in the first moment, surface breaking      
Your salt is Eucharist    
Lingering on the roof of my mouth      
Like Prince Harry’s cloaked night verse reminding,    
Denying he is there or noble,    
Urging for his cause.      
I wade out of surf towards daily carnage    
Weighted by armor, seaweed clinging    
A mermaid who gambled badly, life for legs    
You married a princess in daylight on dry land  
Singing yes yes, us us, we we, me me  
So I can turn to seafoam, dissolve in sun    
Lift above the waves,    
Why am I not free?      
You lie, you have not released me.    
     
I’m not fooled    
If you’ve left, flouncing out screen door slamming,    
Bandanna shouldered on your walking stick, bouncing,      
Damn you, why?      
Why are you here close as breath,      
Whiskers in the black brushing me delicious  
Seeking me, insisting   
Till each fine hair stands singing on my skin?    
You spill, through these wires    
Betraying just how close we are    
The rumbling current glides through walls,      
Eddies about,      
Coursing down the guy wires    
Tethering me in storm, in orbit    
You encircle me in wreathing smoke each night    
Tying, binding, taunting, permeating    
I don’t want to burn tied to your stake, my sweet    
My whiskered familiar,      
My Möbius love, he  keeps me always on the other side...    
My serpent, Word,      
My silver cord.