"If only I could nudge you from this sleep,
My maimed darling, my skittery pigeon.
Over this damp grave I speak the words of my love:
I, with no rights in this matter,
Neither father nor lover."

--Elegy for Jane
(My student, thrown by a horse)

By Theodore Roethke




Love Poem for Easter


“If I could nudge you from this sleep”
I would press as the air spores beneath
humming birds as you lift up piedmont
as mountain source and in air
with pebbles in hand you strike
fire from inside the flesh as spark.

You wake as love is, as vowels
becomes your vow and presence
in the church not just building
or place, but a form to signal
bloom not only Spring but as
crocus cold is winter fought,
when you emerge, make, roll hills
to ferns and their spores
become sacred arms again as fronds
to border church walls and secret
brooks where even germs welcomed
are viral fingers in velvet box
as life becomes moss then
trees taller than century
Redwoods. I let these pass,
copy sundial repeat. -- No gravity,
no space, not distance felt
without marking code as cipher
of leaves that evergreen wood
and sometimes violet umbrella
of shade kept our passage clean --
what is holy flood of cells
made into skin, pale,
ethereal and gray blue eyes
with elements of green
left as fragrant sight on road
to witness snow melt and dry.

Spring is rock face chipped
weathered as lips and eyes
recover lightning storms for
prize as last year lyrics
shifted as speech make
story bitter and then relief
for somber recipes recalled
what we did to make life
an unforgettable embrace.

This is miracle not verse alone;
we are not ends in it. We hold tight
to this brief mischief of last grunt
or song to wrestle child out of shell.

Perfection is apt imperfect as syllable
-- symbol of pause.

We are impossible-true
in unique voice we rasp
gutteral roll once upon a time
the yellow forsythia walked
where bronze fires, viridian eyes
beheld our shivering self as beast
resurrected carbon-light-plasma
into what is or was before,
and you, we become sepulcher

Yahweh or his name shatters
all false reports --news stories
leaked and discarded onto spikes --

What is true is never false,
and what is false can be true.

Love is our fundamental brown earth
that erodes as dust as ocean
sips glacier in periodic change
to reveal Passion performed
on Hebrew scroll, our lips
as Eucharist become element
in unified galaxy
where we fuse impossible
as that may be to discover
what cannot be reduced simply
as cause, affect or accident.

There is no prophecy-perhaps
in acts of words as right.