Statuesques
A vignette:
the bald man on the bridge
grasping the balustrade. His grip
is as thin as a grimace.
He pores over the eddies,
the flam of the water,
watching
the sun skim his image
from the surface.
I do not know what to tell you
he tells his fingers.
*
In the sky there is a ribbon of scarves,
a wishful of brilliance.
Somewhere there are broken
lutes. Starlings part the air.
There is a plane
careening in the fifteenth cloud to the left.
� *
I love you, and that's a fact.
It fills me till I'm rigid,
puts backbone in my backbone.
When I speak, the words
skulk in my throat. Yes I'm afraid
of losing you, of writing in ripples,
of standing in the shallows and shadows
without you.
� *
High above
the tenements, the flags are
full of our semaphore. They flutter.
And their hands are festooned with the bunting
of all the summers we'll see.