DESDEMONA

Desdemona, seated this morning
on the verandah looking over the gulf
of ibis and pelicans brooding
across the water, drinking coffee, legs
crossed while she writes in her journal,
reclaiming her life here, returning to
the elemental, the sea, the morning
wind, the sun, her black dress, her black hair
draped suspiciously down her shoulder,
looking for words, for the four-handed
massage at the spa, stones warming
her back, the promise of spiritual joy
and awakening. O for mimosas at brunch!
A love affair, and coffee! Starfish and collecting
shells naked along the shore, feeling Cuba
in your mind, in your thighs, candlelight and
starlight from the balcony, incense
in your sleep, seared tuna and spinach salad,
bowls of she crab soup, kisses from
the past, anguished betrayals, the cleansing breath,
the promise of love, the memory, and
of course the words, these words, these words
she lives by, abides by, the words she cherishes,
conch, whelk, cockle, sand dollar, dolphin,
scallop, lover, lonely, alone, naked,
the shore, the tide, the stars and the moon,
mojitos and Italian jazz, destiny...
Desdemona, the unfortunate,
waiting on the verandah, and writing.

MORNING/SANIBEL ISLAND

Christmas Eve


Sun through the shutters creeps
across the bed, a blessing
in our sleep. We rise
to prehistoric birds circling
our dreams, pelicans and
osprey, audacious crows
spreading their malarkey
in the palms, even eagles
with their fingers stretched
upon the sky.

Coffee on the verandah
as the hotel staff spray
down the deck from last night's
carnaval, spilt pitchers
of sangria and cerveza
and mojitos, and you now
in your peacock hat
and your Ben Franklin
flip flops I find so fetching!
After breakfast I walk
along the docks, the shore,
the boats, and find the poolside
abandoned, save the fountain
of steel egrets spitting
a pool, and old lovers
in a white panama hat
and pink flamingo pantsuit
drinking prune juice
under the palms. I am
here alone, drinking coffee,
sprawled on a cabana,
bathed in the sun as the wind
washes over me. I am
the prodigal, a hedonist
stretching my limbs,
my sinews, closing my eyes
so the translucence pours
onto me, a stiff and godless
thing, an emptiness,
a wastrel in god's poetics,
these lush and pagan
latitudes awaken the body
slowly, lovely, the winter blood
and bones stirring, waiting
for you.

Tenderly

For the last eight years I have been listening to Chet Baker, especially a song entitled "Tenderly." I found it on a CD entitled "The Last Concert" that I stumbled upon in the stacks. His music has always seemed hauntingly familiar, as if somehow imprinted on me, especially this last recording, in which you can definitely hear the rasps of mortality in his voice. There are moments when the trumpet work is divine. I have played the CD over and over these past few years, have listened to his earlier recordings, and have even written a poem for him. There is something wonderfully fragile and vulnerable and confident in "The Last Concert" that has really had a pull on me. It's shaped my sense of nuance and mood and feeling. So much so that I've sought out other artists recordings of the song "Tenderly." (Even this afternoon I was caught off-guard when driving along Captiva Island Road to find a residence named "Tenderly." Among all of the typical nautical monikers and island names and pirate titles, we saw "Tenderly," which seemed as out of place and refreshingly rare as any boat or place name I've seen in years. So tonight, imagine my surprise when listening to Mantovani's recording of "Tenderly" that I suddenly recognized a song I'd been listening to all of my young life! The version is so schmaltzy and cleansed of countermelody that it sounds almost unrecognizable, except a particularly rich phrasing of trumpet. I used to place that song, and that Mantovani album, over and over when I was young. I played it because it evoked a deep sense of feeling in me--a confusion of tears, of sadness, of joy and love, of grief and sorro, of loss and loneliness. (Leave it to Mantovani's rich strings) . There was something in Mantovani that said it was okay to feel in music, something I realized in snippets in band. It was a bit grandiose, and haunting, and full of bathos, sure, and for me it was the ultimate escape in a household that seemed devoid of emotion--schmaltzy music that was nothing but emotion. It was about being alone, letting my constructed self go, and letting this music in, letting feeling in. In a way, when I was home alone and listening to my mother's Mantovani album, for that brief respite of loneliness, the solitude of being alone and listening to the music, that hour of self-indulgence, the house could have been called "Tenderly."

POEM FROM SANIBEL ISLAND

for SD, Winter Solstice, 2003


Walking the frozen trails
of the County Grounds
(now excavated and
smoothed of their history)

the narrow ice-tamped
runs in fields of hip-high drifts,
burdock and milkweed husks
stubborn in the wind,

you walk ahead, fists buried
in your pockets, your arms
scored by stigmata, burning
even in this savage cold,

you trudge along, stingy
with your secrets, the past,
the unimaginable story,
the unspeakable crime,

and yet, behind you, stumbling,
I keep asking, lest the words
spilling from your blue lips,
the burning anger, the raging

star beneath the skin, should
suddenly stop. You let blood
speak but it does not speak
the truth you know you must

shape with guttural sounds,
while overhead as we trudge
in the angry ghosts of breath,
a big hawk chases us, his cold

eye glaring, his yellow beak
knifing the solstice air:
is he a menace? or
guardian? and below us

as we crunch and grudge,
we see runnels of mice,
like veins in the ice, rivulets,
passageways dug through

the snow skin, shadows
scurry in the cold, let's admit
it, we came here on the
shortest day to witness

the death of the year,
the death of the world,
to punish ourselves, to
reach beyond the darkness

and the fear, beyond
the ice and the terrible
cold, to somehow lay bare
the great betrayal

and the unspoken
remains, to begin again.
Tell me your story
one more time, and this

time, when you ask me
why I care, think about
those trails, how much
our fingers ached, your

trembling lips, that hawk,
those mice running under
us--the stubbornness
and the world's last gasp.

When you ask me why I care
think about the stories
buried all around us,
those who could not give voice

to the truth of their lives
and how all of that does not
matter any more to anyone
and that when I say it matters

to me I mean it, it
means trust me and what
I say, it means I am here
and I will follow.