While Another Dove Nude into the Breakers
One talked with a talisman
hung round her neck
One scattered ash in a spot
sacred to one other
One wandered among scrub pine
and heard surf through the trees
One slept in the dunes
under noon sun
One saw a freighter
just off the coast
The baleen were diving
in its iron wake
One brushed the hair from her eyes
with the back of her hand
Like a gardener
while another tucked a pencil
Behind his ear
like a carpenter
One said of a city:
save it for us
Though they never entered
that city together
One laid a watch at his feet
and said: time is a river
One hung a yellow diablo
from his rear view mirror
One stopped in a stairwell
to declare her love
One opened a diary
and found a blank entry
And turned the page
to wander after her
One traveled with a hound
as gray as smoke at her side
One climbed a mountain
called Cloud Splitter
While another dove nude
into the breakers
One married in a Memphis monsoon
and the same one refused to marry
No matter how June the day
and fair
One said there is no twilight
like a Memphis twilight
The sky lavender and river
on the last pale blue day of summer
One beheld the rice paddies of Arkansas
one saw egrets like white fruit
Flocked in the branches of a tree
at Moon Lake, in Mississippi
While another watched the sun
spin grass into gold
And the same one beheld turbines
harvest the wind
And passed wash after wash empty of water
Blind Hills, Black Canyon, Dead River
It was dry season
the green grass gold in the sun
One beheld a woman behold
the egrets arrayed in the tree like a strand of pearls
One woman wore the strand
in the green gold grass in the sun
One loved a woman
who had been loved by a man
When they were young
when she was a diver in the breakers
Two men loved a woman who grew her hair long
even in summer
One watched in a fever of desire
watched her lean by the river
Watched her take water from the river
that she poured from beaker to beaker
As she poured her love
from one glass into another
From lover to lover
