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THE WOMAN ON THE BEACH

for Wallace Stevens

She could cliff and order waves, if they were climb-
ing up to reach her touch, or curling in
with drowning, freezing fingers. But, not shore,
and closer than they to drowning now, she hears

the phantoms tooling over shale, their long
unrooting waverings singing the air
into her hands. Then, as she plants and pours,
learning her music, with no difference how

she seeds them out, or harvests in, or racks
the dark with her questioning, she pulls the caves
from sleep with her answering chant and noticing shore.
The waves won't hear her now; she won't feed them;

and it won't matter how she pulls them in,
gathers their green in seedlings weighted all
spiralling through, to make her bounded dream.

THE NAMES

Trailed in the water, broken low branches
shake when you rise past the swans, with wedged bodies
shaping the sky toward the next little island,
where long generations of geese flew before you.

Long generations of geese flew before you,
sang out and melted. Where are the graves?
Where is a feather to pile a moment
close on another; where are the names?

Close on another, where are the names?
So went the questions the geese did not answer.
Where do you contemplate, how do you bury,
is this the same music you mourn with each time?

So went the questions the geese did not answer,
and, as I watched them, I entered their bodies
and followed the movement of light on the swans,

and followed the movements of light on the swans.

CONVERSATION

Edward Weston's "Squash," 1936

"Delve for me, delve down, delve past your body, crowned
by its hidden stem, into shadowy alarm;
you will not vanish past our dark-shed charm,
throat over throat, ankle to ankle, bound
in our different arches, summer-nicked and browned
interlocking rings in the chain of wrist and arm."

"Lie for me, lie, and I will feel you turn.
Mark out the summer's bending time. Yes, learn
to cradle the concrete ground to softness. Stay
Measure me past my stem, though your shadows churn;
Close yourself over; encompass me like clay."

MOON

Then are you the dense everywhere that moves,
The dark matter they haven't yet walked through?

No, I'm not. I'm just the shining sun,
Covered up by the darkness sometimes.

But in your beauty-yes, I know you see-
There is no covering, no constant light.

ForPoetry