A Tour of the Ruins

 

 

She gazes at her face in the mirror. Three times

she adds then removes a painted on smile

 

in preparation for her meeting

with a ghost.

 

He waits in an armchair in the hall—

 

You haven't changed.

They trade

 

two silent kisses on either cheek.

A slender arm

 

encircles her shoulder

and he takes her

on a tour of the ruins.

 

 

 

It's nothing, she warns her current lover

who trails behind with the others.

 

Just a memory, nothing more.

 

And it is known:

only he can find the secret road

 

that winds like an invisible catacomb

through shattered cathedrals

 

that part before him

like an ancient sea—

 

and when he is gone again

she looks in the mirror:

 

everything behind her is broken

the color of broken stone.

 

 

Breach

 
Sometimes, when it comes
to people we love, we say things
we don't mean.
 
Like yesterday.
When the reservoir on the hill flooded
through our back door
and water was filling our house

from foundation
to rafters
 
I was swimming

the perimeter of our living room

taking stock of the damage

 

in my nightgown—

the black satin one you gave me
for Christmas three years ago—
 
and from the fish tank
of our kitchen, I saw you—
pacing the back patio.

You were watching the gallons pass
across the grey cement
in a steady tide,

and I asked you through the window:
 
Would you like me to make you
a good cup of coffee?
 

Sometimes we ask questions
that have no answer
 
and make promises
that are impossible to keep.

 

Undercover

 

 

Every morning I spied from my window

and waited for my enemy to leave his house

and drive away to work.

It was then that I crept

 

through his back door

and took books from his shelves.

and read them hungrily

from cover to cover.

 

They weren't texts

I would have bought for myself.

They were fat bestsellers

hardboiled detective thrillers, the kind

 

written with men in mind.

Bold covers embossed with metallic letters—never anything

that announced itself as sensitive,

clever, or kind.

 

And so in the end

I learned nothing at all

about my neighbor

and nothing about myself.

 

Except that there are many rooms

in his house I never cared to visit,

and that there is a thief

that dwells in each of us.

 

 

 

 

Listening for the Enemy

 

 

An old grey Indian

was lying on the ground

with his ear to the ground.

His eyes open, near the hillside.

 

You spoke to him. You

asked him about the frontier.

He replied, What frontier?

That's all. He didn't move.

 

And you desired him. But he

was eighty years old, and almost dying,

and he didn't want you at all.

So your desire

 

with all its sharp edges, hurled back inside you

Rebounding like a terrible

wounding echo

from the center of the earth.

 

 

 

Perimeter

 

 

This is the hollow—

 

between who I was then

and who I am now

 

and in it, someone never fails

to play the first nine notes of Für Elise

 

with fingertips made of glass

and in it there are flashes

 

from the burning motorcycle

scene where Dennis Hopper

 

and Peter Fonda's journey ends

in unexpected fire.

 

 

This is the crater—

 

and in it a set of black birds

flies from edge to edge with ease

 

and in it someone is always sitting in the dark

writing two letters—

 

one to the impossible self

and one to a real person

 

who has become impossible

to reach.