POEMS
TEXT FOR THE FALL APPEARANCE OPERA
The burgeoning scatter of black–
birds this dawn awoke
me: fall, which had not
yet appeared, appears
&
then begins
to disappear as one by one they leave
this place of many trembling,
precarious leaves, the turning
not yet done, not the flight
away, but the dance of these
leaves among my eyes.
PASSAGE
A ship moves close
to the shore in the night, running
lights catch the waves in,
the waves are drawing the shore
closer to the ship, everybody is
moving closer, nobody
sees they are moving
bodies on the water at night, drawing
closer to the moving ship, already
my body has moved with the waves reaching
in to the white shore, the ship rides the
swells in so I'm reaching it, near
enough so I hear the thump of
its motor through my body, so
its sound becomes part of the body I have
left standing on the beach.
