Some early poems

Before heading to Louisville, Kentucky this last weekend, I pulled out two binders of my early poetry. I wrote the poem that follows on September 20, 1983 in Cotati and San Francisco.

Sunset on the Bay

A slow bass tone is pinning
Treble melodies in air like
A swirling tatting of floating gold
Mermaids hair that spreads spinning
To all shores as though
An elegant spider were dancing
Over sunken chess pieces
Allowing seeming strangers
To turn chance the same direction
And sail into reflected light
In the mouthes of gasping birds.

***

I wrote this next poem on June 4, 1982 in Berkeley, California.

In the night

I wonder if
I will ever know
You in the dark?
Know you under the stitched quilt
covers where at night we rest uncovered
-- Candlelight´s golden tendrils
Skeining the air.
Whispers in the wind
Made of red velvet, horse hair,
And lace.
Shivering shifts
Flowing in the leaves--
A whisper in the wind.
I wonder if
I will ever know
You know you in the dark?
Undercover uncovered.