Her Frock and My Flower

She danced at my funeral
In White gown stained with red
And prayers poured through
Limestone lips
That prosaic charcoal charade.

She had a face
That was more mine than my own
When I wilted under blanket, soft
As a foam dripping molasses
Over tired thoughts undressing in nubile light
All purveyors to those gestures
Of that one forbidden rite
Which holds Sky in a bowl
The Earth in a spoon
An ocean in a raindrop
And all chaos in cocoon.

In my arms
Holding the hems of both horizon
Split open at the end
She was undented,
Pale fire; silver gardenia in twilight,
Her sinuous laughter
As dry sprigs clapping in the wind
Raising waves of surrender and unchanging void
Breaking over boulders
I shaped each night, with
Hammer on heart, in a vaccumed voice
So the vestal salt
Do not linger and stain
My guillotine hands
In culpable pain.

She tasted of water
Woven in my veins
With flesh as cotton, left open in the rain
The lake was on her lashes
A swan astride her sighs
And the colors of the world
In the white of her eyes
And then I, a pariah, stood waking in her palm
Having slept through tempests
To return in that calm
Where each drop of desire
Shone like crystal in a cave
Raisin buds flowering
Wave after wave
In that palpable dark
Through same souls set bare
Behind walls and their worshippers
Left unaware.