The rabbit is leaving
He emerges from
A full face pulling up from blood
Those lower to earth
Scientist will tell you this is how
A little guardian to take the hits
Something about gravity
The brother sees his kin, eye
We Form a Line
after Siegfried Zademack’s “Eerie Lane”
I.
Each measured step forward
is met with the crunch of graveled stars.
Our bodies and the shadows of our bodies
build our own long staircase
to solve our loneliness.
We walk a deliberate pace
with our heads bent slightly forward—
one eye on the promised heavenlight;
one eye on the flicker-dance of flame—
crimson candles to match our robes,
bright enough to make a garland
of dull suns on the wall
—another vow as a reminder of vows.
II.
Sometimes I get lost
in my thoughts while I stare
at the cast stardust
we stride upon.
Each step is a whisper
among the exploded galaxies.
III.
When my lips move,
I love you like a shroud,
slips out like a dove from my eaves.
Now I am sorrowful
and aware of myself
beneath the wrappings of traditions;
in love
with another shroud
who has never turned to look
back.
IV.
Behind me I feel all the love
in my life building
and unseen
as though I was Orpheus
holding onto a vow
against certainty
but still silently climbing
the long steps
out of darkness.
I needed to speak
to whisper those words
against the building line
of love.
V.
I want to lessen my devotion
to the candle and the perfection
of measured counts, rhythms
and vows; reach
one hand forward from beneath
these robes
and touch the flow
and ripple
of her shroud.
Does she not also
feel the weight
of a line?
VI.
Would we not spiral arm
and arm together?—
become a dance.
Would we not speak
to each other?—
lost in the sonorous tones
of our voices.
Would we offer ourselves
to music?—
unleash creation
in ourselves.
Would a line break
into dust and gravel?—
become a gorgeous
event.
VII.
This deliberate pace—
each step in our stairway
a year passing under our feet.
The measure of our bodies,
our candles, our flames
deliberately paced
forward to a promise
of something better than
the visible starry heaven;
a step closer to that
blinding light of belief.
Feeder
My mind is a bird feeder;
kernels and seeds in a state of waiting;
what falls to the ground is patient for rain.
The beak is a clasp of a feathered pocket book.
I wear a suit of roots—
squashes and eggplant intertwined.
I wear a red cabbage on my sleeve, or so
everyone tells me.
Fingers slip out of the cuffs green as jalepenos,
and in dreams I run with kitchen utensils
through a patches of broccoli and milkweed.
I tell myself the strangest things:
The heart is a potato in winter;
Put your best leaf forward; My love
is a salad tong; Keep your secrets
on the dark side of the peach pit moon.
Bookmark
with a line from May Sarton
She sits at the end
of his long body.
She believes
all secrets reveal themselves
in the study of a falcon.
She notes this in the margins.
Naked in the sun, he reads
from a book planted above his groin.
He reclines like a guest on her
snowy chaise—the back frames him
like a halo. She studies the plumped
chest of the bird, its head moving
to each stimulation of sound and sight.
He mouths the words from the page
Better to stare the senseless wind...
she barely reveals a smile.
The dog waits to be noticed,
watching the pencil scratch,
the page turn, the falcon swoop.
It would nuzzle his drooped hand,
but prefers a patient reward.
The hips and thighs of the hills
distract no one but possibly
the falcon hunting its lunch—
the turning of a page, the pencil
undulating do not pretend to be mice.
He wriggles his fingers and the dog
moves in for a rub. He twitches his toes
and she makes another note.
Disinterested, the falcon moves on.
In these tight shadow hours
love might be the speck of bird,
the floppy ears of a setter,
the shade within the crook of a book—
another note on the margins,
and a delicate bookmark for the return.
Get and Give
You feel the stars within your reach
on a string, wavering in the wind,
gold as summer grass. Pollen rises
in a streaming galaxy—mini milky way.
You stand facing the pie plate moon
on a crooked stick, beneath
a smoothed ladder. You are transfixed
on a broken rung that seems to sing
a partly cloudy blues. The wind brushes
your cheek, the memory of a girl
you’ve fantasized might love you
in this way. You stand there
with one hand grasping a rope
on a lassoed star, the other hand
holding the housing of this gift you
hope to give—a crumpled box
but the wrapping intact and untorn.
J. P. Dancing Bear is the author of nine collections of poetry, most recently, Inner Cities of Gulls (2010, Salmon Poetry). His next two books will be Family of Marsupial Centaurs through Iris Press in 2011, and Fish Singing Foxes through SalmonPoetry in 2012. His poems have been published in Mississippi Review, Third Coast, DIAGRAM, Verse Daily and many other publications. He is editor for the American Poetry Journal and Dream Horse Press. Bear also hosts the weekly hour-long poetry show, Out of Our Minds, on public station, KKUP and available as podcasts.