Check Me Out In Czech

http://www.outsidermedia.cz/Article.aspx?id=187

The Sea of Things

photo credit: Scott Bourne

So she stood in a field among sturdy stalks
swimming into a sea of yellow

Pollen clinging to her dress like tears
on a dry check or moths to an cracked lamp

The stems unrelenting, milky green
and firm between her thumb and forefinger

I want to be like these flowers
Tall and rooted but bending, leaning,
with the breeze

Growing with only one desire- to thrive
to sprout, bud, and be harvested

No other desire but to live the life you’ve been planted into

With that determination comes a greater service
to be oil, food or fuel, to serve not the sun, soil, rain or dew
but something still unknown and omniscient

To lie in a field tarry with the heavy scent
of new blossoms and thirsting bees
to look through the lattice of the leaves
at endless green

Was it just yesterday that the empty fields
reflected the gray of the sky and tomorrow
they will be a blossomless green?

And she picked her bike from
grassy slumbers and rode it home
Into the sea of things

Jewish Cemetery

East Bohemia, founded 1520

So fresh grass grows up in the underbelly
of a walnut tree, the branches thin and reaching
covered in a moss that shines silver against
an evenly pale sky

All of you lay beneath me, calmer
than I’ll ever be
your stones lean right and left
but all face one direction, east

A walnut, wet and wrinkled
rests cool between my jeaned knees
the material is soft and worn
my skin supple and fat beneath it

There’s sun on my hair
it dances across my face
and my hair holds the heat
it has been dark for four months
but today the birds have come out
to call to each other
we saw them in the empty apple orchard
cooing to the stone saints
someone had forgotten
among the shriveled fruit

A man on a plane told me
you are most at home
in the place your ancestors are buried
but some, are drawn simply
to be there
for others
to remember those forgotten

The nut splits under my nails
like bark spreading from a tree
like the sound life would make
if we could slow it down and listen

With a sigh the shell pulls apart
and where I expect to see rot
a white nut, finally free
of its veiny film
glows up at me

I offer it to you, but you refuse, and leave me
feeling the soft meat melt under my teeth

Your face is as calm as the graves, white
in the sunlight

The Road From Vysočany

I.
It was the kind of sun you can stare into
there aren’t many, especially where I am from

The color too deep to cause a glare
a blood orange so soft, you could swear
it would have no taste, definitely no bite

The sun hung in the sky for a few moments
above the spruce and tuje

Then slipped away as, quietly as it emerged
to light our early Friday evening

I was riding home on my bike- handlebars rusted
the purple paint chipping from the frame

And there was a smell emerging from the cold earth
as if the seasons were changing, subtle

Like the perfume a woman dabs behind
her knees, lower back, or between her breasts

Intentional, so you only smell it when she’s standing
before you, removing a heavy sweater, suddenly
her pale skin her only adornment

And as you follow the invitation to lean
towards her face
you can smell Spring
sweet and clean resting on the cool air
between you two

II.
The road home was not even a dusty pink, something like a speck
of rouge flicked on the horizon- it’s a flat and winding road
past white plastered houses and sinking roofs with coal smoking chimneys

There are two small ponds, side, by side, the top layers so frozen
that small boulders silently skid across the surface
I know because I hurled a couple to see what would happen
clunky rocks and branches sliding across the ice, suddenly graceful

The trees bend like horses to drink
some of the low birches brush the ice in the breeze
and this is my company, I can tell you the solitude of an open field
is louder than any city street I have ever stood

Szent István Basilica

There is something in my stomach
that claws at the tender flesh,
a sadness that wants to crawl up
through my throat and drip
down my face- but it stays

I want a mind like this-
marbled, stenciled and embossed
one that shines like the gold that
decadently leads to the pinnacles of the dome

I want to hold God in my burning red lantern
but the only thing I have to pray for is a fire
and the votives are ironic- small, white and safe

I wonder what connects Budapest to San Diego
or Malibu’s flaming hill- on the train I saw
the fire in the leaves, a courageous final
cry before obliterated by the bleakness

I, am heavy like the plaited
candelabra beautiful and rooted to stone
here the smell of frankincense dances with
the dampness of rain, the air cool and marble
clean but cannot reach inside me

So I pray to be released, to be like the
stone carved Christ that appears to float
in a still room. A cross holds a candle askew
and suddenly hope strikes my stomach,
in the battle of frost and fire
perhaps the former will succeed

Harvest

We rode the fields into the woods
the path was moist and the grass
beginning to turn, all the green
will be blonde by October

There was a stench about the expanse of space
that smelled like harvest, like a warmth
beneath cool cotton

Strange thistle grow up
their spiny beauty stark
against meaty leaves

Forward with Salomeh, up
and down with the rise
of the forest before us

My body rocked and I remembered
my pubic bone pressed to the saddle
tail high

Her veins were like a web pulsing
under a tight coat that shined
when a faint light passed
through the heavy clouds

I traced her blood along her neck
and heaving chest, across her girdled
belly and watched it smooth over
her haunches

The memory came back with a scent
of a sweet decay, apples rotting
below their browning trees and the reins
fell in palms like dreaming

My feet shook in the stirrups till
I pressed hard, clamping my legs
around her, she felt me cling and took me

Knees to leather I hugged her, kept my head
down with hers and watched the fields
disappear from her warm mane

In the woods she scraped my calves and
shoulders on dry birch, I saw us reflected
in a studánka and she cantered home

But this smell has left me with a yearning
I cannot name, something musty and dark
and full with the need to create

Blue Wine

I want you to decorate my neck
with the wine of pomegranates
sticky and sweet, like the fruit
cracked on pavement
tree heavy

You say the moment I stop smiling
is the moment my face is pressed
into the pillow

You danced with me while
I held an empty can of tomatoes
your stubble on my neck, the serrated
tin in my hand

Its true that you leave afterwards,
saying something about your dog

We waded fields of fallen leaves
leaped rivers and lay under the wall
of the cemetery tossing pines

I might be alive again, now
that I have watched my
shadow drown and I’ve walked
the road to heaven and
was able to turn round
was able to wake up

You’re back with your dog, taking
your clothes off again, lips cold
like the thin skin on an autumn apple

After you leave I scrape the red
seeds from the cutting board
watching how porous
wood can be
Would not, could not, washed away

The veins on my wrist are blue like
the dark sea over which I travel
floating above raging waves
and shaking my hands free

I imagine far on the other side, there
will still be a bridge back