I never saw anyone carry herself

like that. Bringing a body rife with spring
into the rifts of summer, making every-
one she brushed feel at once less and more
alone. A delicate vibe drawing us down
Trade Street—she was the world, the world
was we, the talented feelings like optimum
sun, symphonic gongs, purple tulips
with zyzzyva buzzing underneath—I’d say
rouge or jazz if I could understand
its energy, and energy never dies (right?),
is just translated to new forms, like rock
‘n’ roll, first named for how bodies knocked
together and fell out of or into love, falling
when nothing could stop the music
of nineteen, its fuchsia azalea blooms.

 

Passenger, Messenger

You will die in another country
says the palmist in my youth. She says
there’s your lifeline, see how it feathers out.

Like Hokusai the day he died, still drawing
the crashing wave, casting the paper out the window
with a heaving sigh

unfinished—such unperfected days,
only rarely a luminous flare
might huff up a big blaze, die quickly back—

only once to stand at the Peggy Guggenheim
where Marini’s bronze Angel of the City rides high
upon the palazzo, arms thrown open

to undoing dark lagoon. At the mercy
of the egg-wash sun, the Turner sun
in wintertime, the one that won’t shine all the way.

Sitting in the gondola waiting for the moon to show
its only side, presented from behind night’s water-
silken pales, each new phase a little maiden.