I
Through the city, you with your broken fingers
and me with my bandaged feet,

we try
to recall fragments of a dream
we shared, in coffee shops
with your pleasing stories and where we’ll be
tomorrow’s,

playing hide and seek in the desert
or the smoke that hovers and fills
our silent treasure chests.

II
The queen of hearts stared back why,
convince me it was real, before running off
with the king of spades

to the outskirts, along the fens
of Manhattan,. Trying to catch the last barge
to Baltimore as Uranus moved
and was eclipsed by the moon;

long before she was queen
or he’d pulled a Lear for her 
Cordelia, when they were the light
of a new moon,
               smoking  
cloves and holding loosely a sachet
of St. Johns wort.

III
He came with a fire
dying in his hands, ashes
that are still warm
on his skin

She with a smile
that leapt upward
through the smoldering that concealed
their exit across the waking street.

IV
It was a hunting trip to her, winged hat
on, buried deep in his cape;
                              something
to hide in her closets and sketchbooks.
She was born a carpenters daughter,

her tears became the diamonds
she bought paradise
with, etched with answers

deep in the crystal of her being,
a voice that lingers faintly
down the hall,

with eyes like her mothers
and a love like her fathers.

V
His eyes were red from the incense 
that burned a skyless cloud
over the bay, as the current lapped the pylons
and the candles melted
the sand to glass,

a deep reflection
of the restlessness that haunted
the spaces where his father laughed.

VI
It was the story in their cards,
a glyph of the trinity
they shared in body, mind and earth,

that delivered there dreams
to reality.  Even now

she is the ground
his storms blow above, a child
of the moon fighting the fog with his morning,

calling down the rain
to release the heat and grow
roots that will be harvested at noon.

They ran through the meadows
in search of a lost language, slipping past

the signs that would give direction
if they hadn’t been buried in the dust.

VII
She repeats back what was
so well termed about the earth and sun
in spiritual lust;

a storehouse for her burning,
the story a  of a savior arrested
as a thief ,

a voice engulfing the breeze
and investigating empires in their final moments
and survivors,

a soul that charges the walls
of a cave like algae that is dancing in the rapture
of finding darkness at dawn.

VIII
He told her he would take her
anyplace she’d like to go,
even Trenton
              where the night is never
quiet, clicking and buzzing
an insane intrusion
that would keep them awake

if they hadn’t offered each other
salvation, or gave their souls to the sea.


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