Authors I Have Met

I have no hope for regret.

Having forced rivers of it through my body,
only monastic canyons are left.
Imagine! To find such fossil-gleams,
the relics of such multitudes,
jealous, selfish, sexual
ones. The pink of siphon and fingers.
Anemone, earthworm, monk.

The pronouns fly past, screaming geese.

 

 

Enter

A door is a collection of weathers
where the hand outside reads hello,
then goodbye on the other side.
It's vaguely wisteria-shaped, a crane's foot
or ancient Chinese recording of a star.
If you ever see nature forgive,
phone me immediately, please take a picture.
I expect there may be a fox
that uses this cemetery as a highway.
Deep in snow, the concept of bridge
attacks the venerable concept of wings
as the Unnecessary Angel. No one
remembers when silence became a bridge.

 

 

Poem Traveling

(for Sheila Murphy)

 

Ovine-kneed as dreams, go dawn
You are blest as the Isles shining, shattered
bones and Izanami and her mirror lover
Pearl-eyed moments held in a dulse bed

Tangy, they tang as seaweeds in mental winds
Goat-footed dreams choral laps at salt
Retsina in the bureau has its own eyes
which one must refuse to mail homewards

Whose new cartography trails mustard
through paper breath hollows the sheen
of tiny bird bones        left on a plate?
Outside, a cat melting in the fog...

The fog is the phrase "After all, after all..."
spoken polished as a tombstone in Ghent
where you lose all but the most precious consonants
This room like an empty suit owned by Henry James, hanging

the feel of an unopened letter in her hospital...

 

Copyright © W.B. Keckler, 2004.