After Her

\I have been chasing after her

All afternoon with the blinds up

Traffic making a racket on

Tenth street and sunlight a southern 

Flood through the windows of my room.

Lately April, unspeakably green,

Leaves every twig she touches changed,

Yet I am the same as always.

Once green now I grow old. Breathless,

I couldn’t catch up. Eluded

There was no dream that did not slip

Through these ten radiant fingers

Eyes glimpsed from under half-closed lids, 

Not mine yet glowing with my gold.

Dinkety donkety music

From the Pin Ball Palace on the 

Corner of Grant, has given me

Back the horses’ merry-go-round

I rode in summer’s memory;

The horse that galloped the waves’ backs.

But the boy that spurred him on toward

A dreadful last crest to mount, most 

Surely drowned, he never was.

I mount the green of a shoulder

Only to find the fiddler stopped,

No grove resonant with the wood

Boxing in hollowed melodies.

Morning’s green, nature’s virginal

Covering, sprouts from the fleshly

Beauty rooted at my slow feet,

Rough to touch and unanswering—

Something the dog shall piss on as

I listen to the stream shed tears

Of fresh water, barking up

Forever green the same wrong tree.