AFTER THE WEDDING (Tentative)

After the wedding party and champagne 
toasts to undying love and the magic
of finding someone to share this life with,
our indiscriminate yet ruffled philosopher 
stumbles out of the country club into 
the evening, it's getting dark, the sun has set 
as he walks out on the golf course, into 
the deep rough grass and under the stately 
oaks and maple and beeches, the grounds 
festooned with lilac perfume and sweet 
honeysuckle, rarefied air ripe for thinking 
as he glides over the manicured greens. 
He is not alone. There are deer, of course, 
in the shadows, chewing on leaves, woodchucks 
grazing in the dusk, great horned owls, and cardinals 
singing vespers. What is our friend, our thinker, 
ruminating on? The problem of being? 
The metaphysics of love? The phenomenology of human 
experience, his life, this elegant meditation 
in solitude? No. He's thinking. He's thinking that  -- 
if we can know anything at all of this man 
walking in his ruffled suit and ruffled tie -- 
he's thinking of relationships, how the subject 
always means nothing without the predicate 
and the predicate signifies nothing save 
to carry the nominative lifelessly along, 
no, he's thinking of the endless stretch of 
being and thought, the interminable 
resistance to knowing anything worth knowing,
and laughing at that, and truth be told, his 
thinking returns to relationships because 
it must after all return to something, now 
under this dark beech, his parents, how they 
sleep in their graves in another country, 
forgotten and unforgiven, refugees from 
this life of anguish, how his brother's ashes 
now scattered across the Mississippi 
seem to haunt this golf course like some furtive 
opossum, how his ex-wife Hannah so many years 
removed from that night on the ferry when 
she said he'd thought of nothing but his own 
private thoughts, that he couldn't feel or make 
sense of a simple thing like love as he was 
so afraid and it wasn't until he walked 
onto the dark wet grass of the eighteenth hole 
under the magnificent oak that spread 
its wizened limbs like some minister delivering 
a benediction that the something suddenly 
arose, an uncomfortable feeling, an unease, 
something unkempt and disordered, like the 
wisteria tendrils raveling and unraveling 
nearby in this lush and manicured world, it was, 
he knew, or thought he knew, something well, unknowable, 
unframeable, something that could not be 
parsed in the mind's grammar or a Socratic 
question, it was something else flooding his 
being, a coldness, a chill, an inarticulate 
awareness, a discomfort with no logical 
origin, it was a trembling, there, in 
the golf course, of all places, it was 
something like the trembling tickle of lilac 
blossoms on his lips, the delight of that, 
the sweetness not of memory or beauty 
or heartache but an emptiness, the chill 
of the evening and the stumbling skunk 
approaching, how his life would never 
be the same. 

BLACK AND WHITE

The artists stand before two 
large boards of words, black letters
on white tape and white letters on 
black tape, they give you a card 
and ask you to write a word that 
describes you, any word, so you 
comply, you write obdurate, 
you don't know why, it's the first word 
that comes to mind, first word best word,
right?, you love how the b and d 
bump into the dull vowels and
bleed the word of any meaning.  
The artists say go to the boards, 
the black one or white one, and 
tear off a word. You want to pick 
a good one, like obdurate or art  
or comply, but those words aren't there, 
you see only the white skeletal letters 
of remiss, and you know at once that's 
your word, so you tear it off to 
reveal a white surface with black 
letters, and then the artists say  
add the taped word to your card and 
come back later to see the message
that's revealed, it's a truth, but 
you don't comply, you take your card 
and leave as if you're carrying 
some passport that will gain you access
to the precious night, unaware 
of the obdurate truth surrounding 
you. 

PALIMPSEST

She has one of those lives,
you know, house in the country,
flat in the city. She writes poems,
drinks coffee, unrushed, always
stylish, lost in thought, her attention
never broken, her kitchen filled
with lemons and vintage tomatoes,
and when she takes a lover,
one in the country, one in the city, 
her loving is slow and deep,
all hay fields and gloaming, all
ardent and exquisite, strong hands 
molding her man's muscles,
and if they want to take her hard and 
from behind she finds another
among the cappuccinos and cut
daffodils reflecting off mahogany pools,
the used bookstores and patisseries,
among the meadowlarks and
the old disheveled barn behind 
the stone and glass cottage. 
And so when you enter her lilacs
and cobbled drive, or meet her
at the park with deer and copper beeches,
you are mindful, self-conscious,
astonished by her apricot skin, her
bountiful hair, her honey sweet
hibiscus hair, and you know 
you are entering her world, her poems,
you all mud-skinned and anxious,
thick-fingered and callused, 
stiff, all slapdash and rat terrier,
and sure enough after the mornings
of lush cotton sheets and ruddy
pears, lunches of avocados 
and cold Gorgonzola salad,  
dinners of cold chicken and yams
and soft furry peaches that tickle 
your teeth in their golden flesh, 
you see them appear in her notebooks,
gradually at first, neat poems written 
with a  poised and perfect hand,
you see intimations, intricacies
of the familiar, suggestions of
your intonation, your petty crimes,
traces of your hands, and hers,
the sound of your breath 
in the deep meadow night, 
the way her bed creaks in her flat,
how her kisses steal her away
from her words, her shuddering
lips, you know then as you take 
once last look at the pond and
its dragonflies, the choking 
water lilies, the insects buzzing
in the cattails, in your last days
of reading Rumi and that none
of this, nothing, is about you,
you are not the paramour, the
Lothario, the sad philosopher 
in these poems coming faster now,
you are the restlessness, the
scruffed and noisy sound of leaving,
unkempt doubt washing over you,
you know then that you won't
drown yourself in sorrow or
long after her meditations
in black leotards, no, you will
no longer lust after that lotus pose,
her calm presentness, no, you'll
wear wrinkled shirts, eat hot dogs
slathered with ketchup and onions,
you'll avoid bookstores and 
swear off coffee shops and 
organic food, you'll survive,
traces in print, clues, evidence
of some intimate endearment 
and passion now suggested and
so easily forgotten, save the 
faint whiff of lilacs and coffee, 
sweet clover and the mad
honey of haying.