white asters

{maple leaf in the woods, london, on., june 2007}

{grasses & white asters, london, on., also june 2007}

Sometimes when I write poems I come up with such small little disjointed pieces it feels like I am some sort of archaeologist; I can imagine how whoever found tablets with the fragments of Sappho must have felt, trying to reassemble them. At the early stages of poem, all I have are tiny flashes, shards in the dirt that are clear yet disconnected, and I have to figure out how to re-unite them.

[fragments]

1.

dwelling in the togetherness
of our (im)perfection:

2.

we found the secret of the
heartshape wood-knot, black acacia.
days of catlike wandering & russian fairytales,
lying in the grassy chaos of the ruins:

(you know
i could never be with someone
who didn’t understand the beauty
of burnt by the sun)

3.

we are prowling for something,
& our little truths are filled with light,
in every space between the leaves,
our breathing, wind in the long grasses,
cat-tails resonate with blackbird notes
& the parallel songs
of locusts humming in the dust.

4.

something about her
makes me dream
of waking up facedown in wet grass
tongue-ful of white asters.

5.

but every time i am shaken
from that languour
by my promise of protection

all tangled in the roots of this;
to take every ache &
sun on the pool
through the willow, weeping
thick with carpglint,

braid it into your hair
& hold you without thought
of myself, or possession,

remembering the ethic
of my love

6.

don't know how
to voice the truth that's
trapped me here,

struggling in the leghold,
tender snapping of my
bones like white flowers
snaring the stems leading
to the heart;

but i am not shadowy
nor vulpine i just don't know
how to speak the words

flying away like blackbirds flushed
from the rushes, red slashes on their
wings like startled blood --