After Hearing About the California Forest Fires, 2007 (slightly revised)

"Who set the House of Beauty burning?"
-- " The House of Beauty" Mark Doty

I heard it passed through Malibu
and burned to the ground the homes
of some famous people -- at least
I think I heard right, since the news
was in Spanish and I was only half-
paying attention. The wind
is the enemy, said Schwartzenneger
underneath the Spanish dubbing.
Who fights with wind? We do:
to save what's beautiful.
What a strange harbinger of fall:
the wind our enemy, fire our enemy,
Malibu burnt, all those trees...
I saw it again on the afternoon news,
again in Spanish, again only half-sure
of factual details. That was a few
days ago. Since then its disappeared,
no smoky after-thought, no comment.

(Personal) Essay on What I Think About Most, after Anne Carson

Myself.
And it's emotions.
The wind is cool
today, spring, under a green tree
of who-knows-what species.

Can I tell you I still fall in love
with full lips
and impenetrable hair.
Why?
Let's look at this:

Walking around is a practice
in error:
making mistakes wherever you go: tripping
seeing
everywhere your old love....

but walking isn't always that.
It's sometimes when you notice
a small puddle
pushing a thicket of pollen
down the cracks of the sidewalk,

and as it moves you figure out
you still love
things that push,
or push out with the wind.
Am I

committing an error
puzzling this?
and puzzling over the trees?
I'll tell you I've never been
thrilled about pines:

they stick to your fingers
like the past
or fresh dough
with too much yeast.
What are trees, anyway?

A branch is more strung-out
than a wrong note
on a beginner's clarinet,
but it turns and twines
and falls sometimes,

like love sometimes,
that eternal error. Do I love
oak leaves
as much as I think?
Do they wrap me

like a maple leaf would
given the right season & chance?
You know I can prove to you
water is an error:
it disappears in the sun.

But when it
rushes
into a crack on the sidewalk,
an error is something
to hold on to.

"Haz un parentesis a tu vida" (revised)

The slow closing of
(a breath in: warm
surroundings:
two arms are lovely
simple, browned a bit
by hair and sun, they
collect everything: spring weather
the gathering of clouds
my elbows & hands that shudder
like oak leaves,
close and warm as
the horizontal lines of a forehead)
my tired eyes at night.

Taking Steps

Taking a step is breathing in
every bus and passerby.
Every shove against the shoulder
is a wheeze inside my nose;
and the quick terror
of closing your eyes
for a brief splitting of
carbon and oxygen --
how much time is that?
-- is what gives you doubts
makes the step grow long
like the insides of a salt
and you reach quickly for your map.

A Strange Attempt at a Form Poem, and it will need lots of work

A love poem is a poem of pursuit.
Each word catches your
earlobe, tries to pull
you down
into a body
a biology to pick apart.

A mouse roams your eyes in pursuit
of the cream of your
pupils. What pull
the morning has on the down
of your body.
Already I'm falling apart.

All this searching, pursuit
of your hair, your eyes, your
hands that are gravity's pull.
Look down:
a painting of your body:
no lines, just thickness, which is a part

of weight & measures, of pursuit.
Listen to me when I tell you your
suns are hands. Don't they pull
space together, up, down?
And the body?
Isn't it space too? Expanding apart?

I suppose I can't know the science of your movements. Yet my pursuit
is wholly good. Your
weight lies in what pull,
like water, distributes down
into every nook in the body.
There are days I'd like to spend inside one, if only a small part.

A Dilemma of Sorts

I have two versions of the same poem, and need some advice:

Version #1
Death-Wrestler

“Poetry is the death-wrestler” – Dave Smith

With a mouthful of questions,
I reach into the pocket
of my brain to find death, but
there are no answers to speak of.
The most hateful point of
death is the grey dawning
of absence, that small mouse
you hear only just: gnawing, crumbling
old, stale crackers in the back
of the cupboard. Reaching for
death isn’t impossible, though it
looks almost foolish, as if you were
rummaging through a chest of clothing
and wrestling for the spaces
between clothes.

Version #2

Death-Wrestler

“Poetry is the death-wrestler” – Dave Smith

The most hateful point of
death is the grey dawning
of absence, that small mouse
you hear only just: gnawing, crumbling
old, stale crackers in the back
of the cupboard. With a mouthful
of questions, I reach into the pocket
of my brain to find death. But there
are no answers to speak of. Reaching for
death isn't impossible, though it
looks almost foolish, as if you were
rummaging through a chest of clothing
and wrestling for the spaces
between clothes.

What I like about the first version is visually it's pleasing, and it seems to me to have a progression that to me make sense, as in, it develops. What I like of the second version is beginning with the biggest image in the poem. The second version would need fine tuning in terms of spacing, but...I just don't know. Any suggestions?

A Poem by Gillian Conoley (not by Andrew Ratner)

LOVE'S PORTFOLIO

A fragment
of a fair copy would undo our slant meeting,

an in–flight movie
where we chatted

how life was choosing not choosing.

Joy and gravitation,
the day turned

canonical,

my book's cover and spine.

The sky blued
vagrant scribblings into print culture,

what shall be clad,
the day’s whole cloth.

A scribal hand,
a something.

A kiss away, a kiss away, a reader's
curve,

a reader's little addict
in black pants who would like to

sit in the dust as Heav’n’s other spangles do.

I lowered
I wrote the answers on her hand
I approached
as an alias, trachea

without sound, my signature, bright felon.

Folds (revised a tiny bit)

It's the folds in your lips
that have me staring --
out of curiosity, though,
not in an ugly way --
they collapse & spread
as you smile and speak:
like how petals crease inward
toward their center

or socks
on the way to the hamper:
going limp, curving
inward and warm
letting the washer know
of the day's travels
finishing up dry
& new & ready.