ELEGY, LAGO MAGGIORE

That the pines pine for you
is a sign your dying came
too soon though expected.

The little foxes come to sniff
your grave startling robins
who hop among the rocks.

A TALE OF OUR TIME

You've left the sleeping city on a broken road,
cloaked in torn gray, a king thrown from his throne
by slaves, whose bonds adepts of chaos loosened
with promises that will not be fulfilled, They are intended
to serve as dreams, more subtle chains than those cast off.

When the citizenry wakes at daybreak to gaze
bleary-eyed
into the gaping jaws of a roused sea beyond the
wharves,
it will see ships of commerce tied to cleats, forsaking tides,
and their queries will be answered by tales of dragons that spit
gold, and flamboyant songs of giant birds whose talons

tear holes in the world's breast and bruise the knees of time
so badly they cannot be healed. You, once forced to flee,
will be tried as responsible, and the populace required to go
back to sleep, to wake in utter darkness when even fear
cannot be seen and stark reality is chosen to distort the scene.

Night is not as cold or black
as the dark that wraps itself
around my pictures of you.

That I have lost something
I never knew I had, means
my life's face has eluded me.

If I lived in hell those years
we burned together, I am now
spent--where there is no fire.

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