O, Brown-Eyed Belle of Saint Mark

O, Brown-Eyed Belle, I think of you oftener now.  Resting on the antique wooden chairs yesterday, I realized that I never said “I love you” to you. Not even once. Remember the six-floor walk up on St. Mark’s Place not far from W.H. Auden’s? The tears of seven saints’ sorrow? The commotion on First Avenue below? Remember your sacred doubt? Riding around Staten Island on a bus as a kid, wondering what the Big City would be like? I remember your cobalt blue robe, your raven black hair and black Irish eyes; your wit, the old movie house, your snow-white hands, your honeysuckle and ginger perfume, your perfect face, your smile like the Left Bank. These fragments are all I have left of you . . . You once said, “I think you like the idea of me more than me,” but that wasn’t so. The whole of you was just too smart, too elegant, too refined, too lovely for me to try and contain and so these fragments are all I have now, they are the you I still cherish and have always loved.

The Princess

You could stay in Amherst
Put down some roots
... Get a job at the clinic
Buy a ranch or split-level off
Tonawanda Creek
Go to the old Lutheran church
In the village
Get to know the pastor
And his wife
Find a mate
Drive your kids to band practice
Shop at the Walden Galleria
Or you could go back to Tucson
In your '93 Chevron and
Leave the rest of us wondering
Whatever became of that
Charmingly eccentric woman
With the sun, the moon and
The wild blue ocean in her
Eyes?

Nothing's more
Seductive than leaving
Town.

1955 B Actress's Lament

I didn’t

struggle

study

sweat

and

sacrifice

just to

end up

in some

body’s

dumb

new

wave

poster.

The Virgin Snow

Naïve white drops fall from

The sky and from the two lakes

In Seneca territory

Near the border where

You were born.

Every kind of pilgrim

Crosses that border

Where you watch white

Unmanifest desire

Untouched, original

And new, like pure thought

Become substance in the

Cold, thin air.

You walk on icy roads

Past Methodist steeples

Frozen waterfalls and dusted

Tree branches, to a house

Built before photography

A maple-stained corner home

Near the creek that flows north

And empties into the Niagar

A home that people stop to

Gaze at.

           

You continue walking up a

Dozen or so creaky wooden

Steps to a bedroom where lay

A woman who will no longer

Even kiss you.

Out of the

Darkness are reflections of

Crystalline blue eyes and

Skin as white as the blanketed

Sidewalk.

A cool rhythm is in the voice

And a cold blue light emanates

From the TV screen as snow

Sticks desperately to the window

To then freeze or

Evaporate.

“This is not the virginity

I had sought,” you think.

“But it is pretty.”



9 Autumns Past

the young blind
woman asked me
to take her along
winspear avenue
to the store
on the
corner.

she had the
warmest
hands.

The Transmigration of Souls

suzanne and i stopped in
the bar where she met
her first husband, stopped
into the blue & gold
place as we used to call it
in the east village;
she'd gone there with
him, too.

"i told him," suzanne said
at the bar, "if we don't
work through this, we're
going to have to do it
all over again, in another
life, i mean, do you really

want to be
married to
me
again?"

To the Brown-Eyed Belle of Saint Mark

damn
am i going
to hate it
when

you turn
those dark
eyes
on

me.