Morphology

To seek the place in which my hands

sift fresh earth,

to lay or unveil or replace

incompatible clay with loam.

Forage for bitter leaves, trifolium, nasturtium.

Consider my days in terms /

the outer limits /

the true effects of nature, nurture.

~

Beautiful though it was before, [the garden]

is now a scrap heap.

Metal betrayed by flakes of rust,

worried by deep-lodged ores, by memory.

I can’t see you for all the red.

Molecules slowly become productive elsehow.

~

In another time, within [this garden]

our molecules are in love.

An apparatus blinding and self-

replicating.

We are, for each other, both inventor

and invented. For once the army

of loss is routed, ouroboros through the ranks.

~

In this one, [the garden] is still a garden.

We mimic tortured statuary, twisted metallurgy

green with rain.

Listening at the stem for sounds of growth,

we hear human laughter. In this one

we pretend the figures were stolen from a living heaven.

We shine their hands and feet with kisses

and genuflect to show our vigor.

~

I wasn’t expecting you to arrive. Nevertheless,

[the garden] is now a museum of artifacts,

poorly restored, defunct or nearly.

Great gallery windows curve like swan necks, pour

light like upturned

horseshoes. We glide like polite

phantoms, circumspect around pedestals.

Bell jars cocoon cracked pottery

and arrowheads, porcelain dolls in old muslin,

screw wrenches, turnscrews, dull saws,

telegraphs and telephones,

a Forehand “Perfection” Revolver for women

alone at night, shears, presses, iron

shackles, a self-wringing mop.

~

In another [garden] I build you up

from a flake of fingernail.

With my tools you are tooled. I bid you palimpsest.

Beams from ruptured stars cross the void

years after death, to reach us.

Of this one, I won’t speak further because I am sorry

for where you have gone.

~

In this hard [garden], garden of stone, I cast you.

The wheel turns and you slip between my hands.

Friction devises this hollow form. Within shadow,

dimension. You retrieve, I search.

Everything a stone’s throw away.