ELL GEE

Why do we love them, these last days of something
like summer, of freedom to move in few clothes,
though frost has flattened the morning grass?
Tey tell us we shall live forever. Stretched
like a rainbow across day’s end, my shadow
makes a path from my feet; I am my path.

In your scars
There lives your soul
Your grand cherry tree
Your jagged matchsticks
Raised hillocks of pain
Receded albine valleys
There you lie
And I lie with you
In all your sorrow and growth and joy
In your scars
There lies your soul
And my soul besides.

I’m waiting, I’m waiting and I have been waiting.
I have been waiting for words and water and vapor,
for sycamore branches to fall and for crows to fly.
I have been waiting for this all to break,
for walls to crumble, for tears to stream,
to trip and stumble and bleed.
I’ve watched clouds rise slowly in the depreciation of puddles
and I have seen grooves appear at the corner of peach lips.
I have been waiting for these things and I am still waiting for them all.
My waiting is for the words most of all,
I’m waiting for rhythm and rhyme,
structure and soul, sound.
For the souls of words and their concretion to page or file to list and like,
or their expression in breathless utterances
that find themselves impotent in the wet air
but in their silence go on and on forever.
I have been waiting for happiness
but all that ever happens is that fruit decays and hair grows
we are ever taller and rounder and more sallow.
They say what goes up must come down
and in my waiting and watching I see it all, I see it.

O goodness infinite, goodness immense!
That all this good of evil shall produce,
And evil turn to good; more wonderful
Then that which by creation first brought forth
Light out of darkness!
…much more good thereof shall spring

I live my life in growing rings
which move out over the things around me.
Perhaps I’ll never complete the last,
but that’s what I mean to try.

I’m circling around God, around the ancient tower,
I’ve been circling thousands of years;
and I still don’t know: am I a falcon, a storm
or a great song.