Becky

By the willow and aspen groves,

their accustomed rendezvous,

he'd told her, as often as not,

to find a spot and hide from view:

"I didn't promise--don't say I did,

that the night wouldn't reveal us--

dirty sinners and all of that!--

to Mary, Joseph and Jesus.

Look! that ivy came from Boston,

that's twined--so cute!--around your wrist.

its yellowing lime and aspic leaves

being apt symbols of our tryst!

and more malleable English vines,

braided and falling down your hair--

why, they'll bring out the Eve in you

that tempted me to stare down there!

And panting for grasses, waist-deep,

so we could find a place to lie,

has left not a few milk-thistle stains

around the circle of your eye."

His Becky turned to look at him,

turned round to hear the man she loved,

as warm soft winds tossed and breezed.

And feeling she'd been cruelly snubbed,

she charged the night with all its stars,

to pluck the ivy from their place;

and bid the moon to wear its horns

and scrape the thistle from her face.

"I didn't promise--don't say I did!"

that grasses wouldn't conceal us."

And one more pagan, sprouting wings,

flies to Mary, Joseph and Jesus!

White Rose

(for Sophie Scholl)

I say, Yes to the petal lips given to Rose hearts
  as freely and easily
as all the world's real true outgrowing

  In a velvet crown
you're a sort of supermute conqueror
  of hard suns, aren't you?

  but Yes mostly to a Rose lasting in the head!
and to the cruel mossy roots
  that like  true loving arms can easily
hug and tear,

                    canceling bud and
  swelling, if need be, for a dear Something

Yes, blooming heart that'd better eventually
                                                         not grow!

  For what grows, lonely, can be un-
seasonably rare & gold for just a true time:
  it's less than clod but more
than cold, so a clear plant naming from the first

  And so my one only Rose, cela!

You are really lolling sweet and honey tongued as
  all heck, with a pink push here,
(& there),& the goodwill of an odd briny dew-
  tears below a one  true eye—

A slow-rising fulsome kind of true eye, you are.

  Earth, seen from here, is one hothouse eterne,

 wormed for claypot and urn, 

   and just where
  petals crowning sober clods
have  known it,

    and the leal & pipsqueak pinkbuds, too--

  there you are, too, ripe for angry bees.

"Macky" ( is a fish parable)

who eats a whole rat gnawed down to the bristly bone
 is the same that swims in cold pink;

screwing the mouth to the side, he sends a sin streaming
 out of its guts on a lovely 'lil bubble; 

         

nor if he's ever caught on a pike's discarded lure,
 eyes poked through,will he ask for grace

For down in the deep end of every lake, among the tads,
 stoked and powered by a profligate few

a sinning macky, driven by spite!, will nip at the eel,
 even before the tides turn his face

back out towards weeds & rusty hulls But a scaly sot
 born to eat silt, likes to creep low,

like a creepy mouth-piece for a world of crud!

"The moon is full"

when the spaces always kill the waves  rolling between them;

             when the smelt kissed on the lips

  create storms in their head;when the dripped-in-fat lids of a catfish

        will keep it in a perpetual night;

   and the cray turfed out of its sandy hole are sometimes first to die

    Strangely a lake tosses in the wind til it turns the next page

"Internet love"

Not a gambler, not
 a bit at odds with deuces,
  & good as dead to his first wife

A good even-keeled guy
 with an itch & lots of passwords
   who arrives late to pay his own rent

by wasting half a day!

  And the itch spent,& the path
   to Lil bordered with dragons,mimosa,

he's here, dimples galore,
  grin off-centered and pointing
   to an embarrassingly over-ornate neck

When he's in love, he loves
  and it comes creeping in on a screen

   Setting a fake Ionic pillar in a semi-arc

of a yard is his own idea
  —a virtual work of clip Art!— 

and a poem on scant-leaved keys, too

Todd, in chains & cologne,

  updating his profile,

      while Lil
  waits in the shadows of a fake temple

Recto tono (for Rosi)

By  the slightest quavering dribbling note of the responsorial,
  you can know her

She's still the dear fantast she ever was or a withering face of  her
  full Avila  heart!

Doddering to the front pew, with a limp wing, she likes to arrive first
  because she always did

and can, on her own still, rise an octave like the Queen even with-
  out a livening voice

  and her once whole body.   .

"Why I was dismissed from jury duty"

The accused

sat alone in a glass dock,and couldn't quell the Love in his head!
  Female Crown, in long sleek gown, hair black at roots but thinning

for the most part, said smugly to me
 "Do you uphold the law for fear

only that more like me won't sit content (at least six) in a jury box,
  I mean six females like me?"

"In love", I said," and not knowing how to stop, I think he took her—
  Yes, and is wrongly accused"

"He swept her off a mean street--you mean!- in an unlawful way,"
  she said, baring the look of Law

"And for that he sits there, and eyes every juror that passes by"
  I said, "the soft-browed & steely-eyed".

"And were there perhaps a male more, you'd say he'd sit less alone,"
  she replied,more inclined to jeer

"and he is led now  by sugary-voiced Counsel who, with a raised digit,
  motions him 'up' or 'down'— ha!"

"I say she was a pretty girl, with chestnut eyes, a cute pug nose,
   and puffy lips", I added;

"you'd have approved of it or not, pulled into the same long roads
  Or perhaps the stars have,

duly overlooked, been mostly to blame for the legal mess he's in
  In a tight blouse buttoned tight

braless, too, I believe she'd walked alone into the moon that night"

  But she snapped,"You see differently

or he wouldn't have taken her:she who'd wailed at him, that night
  wails now in this place, for me"

"No, she came to him, half-coyly, half-shyly, desirable on silettos,
  offering a mouth, nose—a bliss!—"

"And at about this time and at this place,the stars oversaw a rape—"

  she retorted, visibly red 

  "No, her hair fell in ringlets, down her face"

"And she who didn't consent, scraping the ground,saying 'Please stop!'
   felt the same June heat as he,

excited but angry, almost sweating trying to run in heels from him—"

  "No, if he'd been the beast,

 as per her story and yours, he'd never had had a brush with hair, eyes"

  And as she'd never run from anyone,

herself too strained, maternal, the female Crown dismissed another juror,
  and after that, another