1. MUSEUM PIECE
Fremont figurines lie in
orderly rows, limbs and torsos
fused in the indistinct
articulation of their bodies.
But the faces -
"shuttered eyes," the plaque describes
Vacant sockets
gaze through
thing palings of clay.
Think of Emiy Dickinson,
eyes locked with God's,
measuring deserts in his clemency.
11. AFTER THE ICE STORM
For days the landscape
glittered, terrible clarity
coating each tree limb,
each shrub.
The pines were marbled,
fingers no one could touch.
Last night, all night
ice fell from the house,
the trees, loosened
by yesterday's sun.
and the wind's late return.
I woke to the atonal
music of change, tiny crashes
and thuds, the bodies
casting off stasis.
111. IN THE DREAM I AM
at the edge
of a river, squatting amid summer's
thick bracken and sumac.
I have been counseled
to dig, so i'm lifting up
fistfuls of loose dirt, weeping,
uncovering bones.
They rise slowly,
like half-waterlogged wood.
Yes, says the voice,
very good, as I hold a perfect
tibula, smooth as the dark
current's surface.
Later, i will try to tell
of the masks I saw, the faces dressed
in pigment and bone. Imagine
a skull as pliant
as pie dough, smoothed
over the ruthless planes of the face.
We can't get away, we can't
even find each other in the dark.
Someone is turning, slowly, to look.