three from Doug Bolling
Meditation 6
Shadow in the ice cream.
Words adrift as though small boats
in storm, blue/green.
The path through a painted forest
wherein the hawk the owl
the skeletons of the bemused.
0h Hypnos where were you when
the clatter woke us.
Where the answers that promise
a dancing moon.
In the rubble the lovers search for
the clothes of their several selves.
Words bend and break in the
toxic river of childhood.
I will bring wine and bread a
decent Parmesan.
Will open the curtain on
Act Five just in time.
0ur steps in the shadow.
0ur eyes that measure the edges
in their long slide
seaward.
Meditation 7
Gather the diaries from the hands
of the dead.
We reach. We hold the abacus
overhead to count the sun.
A recovery of your Proust
in leather bound.
The single cello swooning
through the summer mist.
Shadows that have fled the light
just to be. Be.
And you Joanna you who consoled
me in the bistro of the wounded.
Who made words from the webs
of spiders and invited me
to listen.
How you promised to join me
in the quest for lonely Gilgamesh
in his delicious grief.
Wherever the dead go for
the password.
Meditation 8
The wars among the hominoids.
Giant turtle slumbering on that
Sicilian stone.
But how the echo below
the shadows.
How the orchestrations
of the lamented dead.
Your ontogeny. My ontogeny.
Did you say we're wrapped in skin
like an undecided blanket?
The questions left behind
in the plastic bag.
The memories you sliced into
pieces and offered for dinner.
How so life the polygon of
numerous degrees, a multifold
of scattered pages left
unread unwashed.
Luv the way you fondle the scree.
A shaping into mounds a lighting
of the candles to occupy
the wine.
The way you painted the schist
into a still life and called it
"Cezanne Remembering."
But goodbye, goodbye. Those cries
beyond the spume the foam.
A trip outward destination
unknown unscripted.
So did they.
Did they discover us in that
stolen bottle.
