-from San Francisco Poems, for Gabrielle
You must notice the woman
in the photo, light blazer,
turtleneck, blue jeans, blonde,
but off your left shoulder,
where your hair falls on a lapel,
is the Pacific Ocean and a gray sky.
It is not a melancholy sky. The ocean
too is gray, with a hint of aquamarine
swimming to the surface.
They are like two mirrors reflecting
one another, each holding both
the image and the reality of the image
as its own. The mystery begins there.
Where is the small rock in the mirror
of the sky, the blemish with the spume of wave,
near the edge of what we see?
I still say mirrors. And if you told me,
the sky you see is not the sky,
I would say, enough of that! Look,
those enduring tufts of grass stand tall,
even though the vast Pacific seems to lay
its miles of rolling in a gathering of cotton
swirl along their petioles. And the grass,
with its panne embossing on the raw
cocoa silk of rock at the woman’s feet,
see how it gathers effortlessly beneath
the flame-stitch organza trim of alfilaria,
and the broach of quartz, so elegant
the way it nearly escapes the observer entirely.
My gaze falls then on your left boot,
fashionably cinnabar in this light,
in a perfect downward slope,
suspended over all of this:
the faux-verdigris of the Pacific,
the fire and velvet of the earth’s
late-afternoon camisole,
and the uncalculated batting
of her lashes over the ocean’s eye
as it gazes surreptitiously on you
balanced like sunlight on the pied boulders.
You will say this too is not the truth,
how your face is not the sun you wear
around your neck, your hair the wave-form
of the wind and not the wind itself,
perfect in its disregard, circling your right eye
that sees me for the instant of a shutter.
Almost unnoticed is the road behind you,
only a dash of road in the background
of your right shoulder, and the promise
of a road , so subtle in the cliffs beyond.
It is the road that led me here to this timeless
day, watching your smile, the beautiful
disorder in the cuff of your jeans, the fray
like tuft grass. Enough of this, you say.
But I will see your heart, a lioness in a waking
stretch, here or in some tropic isle, where
you dance in tiered chiffon, or in combed
cotton with a deck of cards, barefoot
on a Sunday much like this. The promise turns
its mysterious way along these ancient cliffs,
but what I will see and I will remember always
is the pre-eminence of you in the midst of splendor.
