The Angel of Forgetting

And then, who knows, perhaps we will be taken in

hand by certain memories as if by angels.  Mary Oliver

Sometimes even the Angel of Forgetting,

assigned to carry a soul to the next body

of one’s waking, also forgets -- to dip the dead

fully into the dark water that drowns out

all the songs that blood has learned by heart.

And as one sits a spell at the crossroads

watching the angel’s dirty feet point this way

and that, ragged wings shrugging, a crow

that seems to fill the whole sky flies over

and caws a long, hollow vowel that sounds

a name once yelled across evening fields

or called through busy streets as a lover passes

or whispered in middle of night darkness

or over a grave with a thump of clay intoned

grounding one again in the home of all names.

And you find yourself on a familiar riverside

as dawn prisms one dewdrop on a stem

illuminating the green flame of earth’s unfurlings,

and the stranger who became your lover says,

I’ve been waiting all morning for you to wake up.

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         Baia del Sorriso

Windy, middle of night walk

down slick grotto steps

to Bay of Smiles surf crash.

I’m waiting for the moon

to toll some answer

I don’t know.  It half-smiles,

Buddha in a pool of ink.

At day’s end, it rose pale

and washed ashore hollow,

a scalloped shell I held

up to hear this sea

before it was called

Tyrrenhian and its cold

teeth devoured Etruscans

who pondered this pounding.

Tonight I’m Celtic heroic

lovelorn and want to take up

arms, deluded as Cuchullain,

and thrash into its salty jaws.

But I have no sword --

only a pen and these squiggles

masking an escape to the deep

where a filmy eye watches

as I sink among the melancholy

company already taken under.

Let lovers who embrace here,

skin flashing in the dark,

remember a man can smile

in the face of ceaseless waves

until he is nothing

but the smile of ceaseless waves.

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