Three Poems

The Wolf

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After love he cannot hear the wolf
lie down outside our bedroom door

or feel its wild ache twisting through the mountains
inside me, this bed a terrace empty

of heaven’s marble figures. No twice-
barricaded walls or sky full of hollows,

just he the blind shepherd counting
drops of moonlight with his fingers,

the man who sees the lamb before he sleeps
while I’m corralled between four walls

with no excuse to wander. Me the wolf
that lay down waiting, the hunger that sleeps

in darkness tufted white, slack ears tilted
under half-moon. I’m outside the door

with teeth that motor in the mouth
to words of Aesop’s warning, me the beast

that troubles the tree line, mitt of claws pressed
down the dirt road throat of instinct.

Memorial Day

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Over basil and bread the earth is drying.
Three copies of the same woman are choosing
their steps home. From the back porch we watch
windows light up high, the potted plants and stainless steel
of single wine sippers creeping slowly into frame.
The fluorescent kitchens of childhood rise up from below,
wet laundry lines drooping over weeded plots. But this time
there are fire escapes and the world outside is alive. No two rooms
are exactly the same. She says something that turns you inside
and all the aches are familiar-fear scurries from the table
through the heavy door and we follow into the bright fog,
the group of us I mean, sweating out the words
to a song we don’t remember knowing. The bar ahead
is a shuffle of elbows and gold, the world a strung up glow
of days spent listening. Of love letters hand-written to the cosmos.
On every neck that bent to hear the rain after it passed,
a silver chain of nights hangs solemn as a promise.

Sunset Over Empire Casino

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As if from some primordial bed of neon,
knots of vapor rise gold over the jagged tree line
where I first learned sadness
was a matter of light
and each bout of condensation
could gather like a medallion
under the right sun, where they are
suddenly palpable, stacked like coins
for the meiser of the human eye.
Bouquet of terrible aches restored, the sky unravels us
into the raw material of breathing
beneath one sun. The softness we
can never quite reach. Our anchor
to the push-button promise of infinity.