Bel Canto
I know what song a rose will sing when heard
by crows in spring and owls in snowy green.
I know what song a bee will hum when heard
by bluebells joined in ringing fragrant grace.
I know what poem a swan will read when Death
collects his playthings from the earth and sends
them hither, deep and gone, or lost in space,
depends how well the game was played with rules
untold and wallops by an unseen hand.
Indigo Dream
Indigo lines golden wrappings,
broken hearts hide
behind outcroppings of seaside trysts.
Indigo cries, wails,
deep blue keening for past love.
I pull an indigo plug from my throat––
ah, to breathe again, indigo’s pulpy
surface, bending to my squeeze.
Inner compulsions impel
indigo to type out names:
blue-violent murderers,
animals, babies.
Where in the country of indigo
is my heart found––half broken off––
huddled in a deep pool of sand.
If indigo had changed
its temporal thinking to heart-mender,
we could have lived in consolation,
how warm biscuits solace
my body that yearned for indigo
and received venom.
Words of my indigo urge me––
in language I don’t speak––
to learn its blue-violet secrets,
its soul-longing for a beguiling glue––
the patient adhesive to couple
a half-heart with another half-heart,
to hear the whole
beat beat beat.
