Four Poems by Dan Raphael

 

[no title fits]

 

a couple days go away and come back spent

 

a tree sees itself in a mirror of clear air

water bark, leaves never still enough to image

 

by the time the clouds get into the soil

new clouds appear, or the same clouds

gone behind my back, sliding up

an unseen thermal escalator

 

the horizon too big a bowl to ever fill—

would it like to? tempting enough as is

for any passing wind hand to sample and thin

 

world restocking at night, prices changing with the supply

exhalations and packaging reappearing in warehouses

afloat in spheres of gravity and fit

 

i picture my root system tendrillng from the basement ceiling

my flowers came after the bees, I hear fruit going the other way

 

Even Almost Winter

 

sunlight and wind’s seasonal alliance

wind clearing the decks, unmuffled & ruffling

shuffling the loose, whether air- or earth-borne

invisible swirling, potential until entered

in this wide a flow no need for memory, landmarks

what won’t get out of the way is gone around

the wind is never silent, plants and others hear the light

but not me

 

i curtain the sun to impede the wind

the necessary imperfection of my walls and windows

as a small percentage of my breathing

doesn’t go through mouth or nose

as being completely covered leads to several panics

 

when i leave the body behind, like a filament

my aura an inert gas incandescing

in unauthorized wavelengths

 

as in winter, wind tithing therms, raising the value

of insulation, the risk of going out into the elements

too simple to number, difficult to get beneath the skin

of sunlight or wind, too easy for my skin to itch

or surrender, to demand another layer of interference

 

Sampling Autumn

 

I want the cold to diminish but it’s september 22

equilibrium receding, while my personal orbit

has been hobbled, made more dependent,

a debt to inertia, to injury

one window rises while another sets

 

I could only watch September

with rain waiting til I can get out in it

navigating among bright thirsty colours

storm clouds taking a short cut

ocean’s rebels evaporating in search of new experience

 

how to swim without water, to hover while touching ground

a temporary agreement on which way is forward

and what that means, traversing a long hall

with only two doors at the moment, gaps in walls

mirrored paper, distant traffic beneath my feet

 

dressing in layers is pragmatic and shallow

I’m naked but have pockets, shoulders like those

of a road less travelled, an excuse only needed

to keep imagination nimble

 

some things that can only be seen peripherally

that part of the eye adapted for another where and when

different recipes for energy and matter, a body

barely closer than tangential

 

days distract me from weeks

easier to guess the month than the year

so much of the world at speeds not mine

vast highways I can’t see or hear

but newton’s law of conservation of momentum

means increased inertia for most of us

 

Stars Without Flowers

 

other natures, other bottoms and tops

doesn’t matter what goes where, rolling to the outside

when there’s no sky follow the pipes until gravity

rolling in the rushes, keeping pace with the pedals

more than slomentum,  measured in neither time or distance

maybe  heartbeats,  learning to dance with a collisive music,

bounce but don’t bend, an elastic form of calcium

a powder so hungry for air

 

some hours my body will only make 90 degree turns

shadows nothing rounded, but when the light source is inside

blaring through the transparent parts of my skin, cells removed for punctuation

turning air into water, it’s the beach rippling not the ocean

so much rippling across the  floor we might break into disproportionate trinities

disassembly lines,  unwoven from the whole cloth

 

two for the price of yesterday, a hunger that starts with a scent

just before the place closes, inside the building inside the building

where it started like a peach pit where rivers thin as hairs

and no longer than I can jump, a fractional but thorough cleansing,

more like editing, changing states without added energy, pull and yield,

spiral and scatter, clouds reflecting in the weeks-dry sidewalk

 

if we’d let ourselves burst into song occasionally, whether watchers

or not, always room for a couple dance steps and arms flung wide

not just to welcome but also radiate, on the spectrum but the invisible part

knowing the second half of the puzzle, some clues have to wait for another day

 

we went from Taco Tuesday to What’s This Wednesday

I brought a spoon in case of ice cream, drifting among several beings

taller than me, walls not sure how long they can pretend

eventually something leans or trips into

confident of a doorway no one minds me walking through 

though someone’s watching my hands, one palm about to ring

the wind wants my hair to think it’s behind me

more than a curb I’m stepping off

certain there can’t be stars without flowers

by Dan Raphael