Anthony-Ryan

Walking carefully after the theater as if up high, or top heavy. Cresting waves of light on the screen, figures so fully themselves it ached. My tasks not so arched, my voice not that loud. There is soft rain over the paved lot & a silence waits inside my car. All I can do is feel.

I You are the empty field stone colored & sky swift so gray you turn purple as if it were evening already I stand at the edge rasping long grass ready to cross II Does the earth weep? Like a wound say the geese gliding over the water Like notes in a song III Wind dogpiles the morning & a willow tree clutches my favorite crook of the river I hold water in my palms to watch my face change shape wondering How full would my hands have to be to change the rest IV Inside the faintest nub of seed & in past the flotation of atoms beneath the thin layer of universe there is a slick dome over something else & everything I've poured out so carefully just scatters

. notes a few dark stones lay in the stream a thin glaze of water glosses them over hems of slick green even the light slips off as notes on a bar of music they stack to a chord i listen for in the voices of others . weighted blanket at last beneath a safe feeling gently heavy as a cloud filled with snow can i drift as i am slowly down onto the places i love to be . riverbend all the water shaped memories i couldn't hold onto will they find me instead . morning up my favorite hill no boulder just myself . statues wearing the snow standing in the same attitude before & after everybody humming with atoms their pose bears my mountain of hours slept through & all i've loved . post-it going for a walk i hope birds fly over me

There was a silver hook of moon in the sky It hung low over the trees so I followed it through the woods It rested at the top of a dune crest so I climbed the slopes up Only to find it aglow far out across the lake and higher than I imagined There are parts of me that soar so I sent them out to meet it While the rest of me remained Aching only a little

in the cathedral of your arching heart let me fall silent . the same wave crashes over and over wishing it could stop . your favorite tree holds a continuous star the sun can't scrub out . a bowed viola reaches from your heart to mine and back always back . i spent so long here amid songs yet to be sung where nothing belonged . i hold you with care inside the utter center where my young self rests . nondominant now my pen in the other hand the letters all new . i must say goodbye my heart still sings despite it i must say goodbye

i am warmth & occurrence & a lucid dream

your body the key change the moon-loved arc the fang in the wave my body the seashell spiral the stained glass the gouged candle your body the cursive vowel the lucid dreamer the light on the sill my body the half-grown tree the rain-painted sleeve the unfinished doorway your body the water-braided light the fractioned zero the wave in the particle my body the aching drum the lilac at dusk the arched memory your body the absence in my body absent from your body

I carry my books so the covers press unseen against my side. What happened, that I fear for what I love to be discovered?

The dahlias have lasted two weeks, more fragrant now with brittle petals. Parched stems cross and tilt against the jar’s lip, the flowers hanging over the edge. I don’t dare touch them, just breathe them in and watch the light fall around and upon them. A grief ripples like rain on pondwater. There was a time which I no longer remember when I first felt a love like this.

Let the moment run long, keep the fire fed with trifles. You keep casting yourself ahead, or pitching your gaze backward onto the painted wall of all that's already happened. The air waits to kiss the bridge of your nose. The light presses to everything, it has this one way of loving to which it rushes. I want for you a flawed circle of smooth water across which your dread of peril disappears, I want a clean mirror for you in which you might see yourself with your heart at its most full with all you thought was lost.