We sad and beautiful animals, strange
how we're always longing for weather-change.
Old visions implode like black-holed stars:
once-smitten Venus tires of Mars,
ramblers sniff neighbor's windows in longing
for sounds of love-play within while crowing
tsunami-spirits with hopeful faces
risk sprightlier riffs to mock to pieces
misery-mongers whose fig-leaf claim
damps the sweet hours with bodily-shame.
Some of us flit with hummingbird-brilliance,
others plod mazes of sought-importance,
but every performer would earn a fresh kiss,
skirting all dead-ends, each new alley frisked
for a breakthrough...yet little but time occurs
in these Labyrinths without Minotaurs.
My repeating dream: an elevator
filled with dear friends gathered in forever
lifts like a rocket in urge toward bliss,
O reverence for freshets and nakedness!
Some race like greyhounds bred to pursue
a dog track's inedible wool-toy rabbit.
They're after an emblem beast to slay,
would choke on dead dryness if ever they caught it.
The Labyrinth's maze is their Minotaur.
In bafflement they rage like Lear,
all the while knowing how joy begins
high in a mountain encampment with friends,
in total work, like running hard miles
in a dream, no room for anything
but this. Who'll shimmer in coffin-clothes?
Hearth fire, cooking-fire, shouts of the children,
wife's foot pressed against man's hard foot,
these speak to us, yet we sell the birthright,
we trade deep heat for its bargain price-tag
because bitch-wants demand their kiss!
(though day in its glory is cloth of gold
and night a bottomless sea).