Goodbye to February, 3 Poems

Dusk

I have misthought myself alone
when giant-visioned women before me
have forged the path under my feet.
I am now at dusk
and the pink-ribboned dome
not long more over my head.
What can I offer the world
to be worthy of the sisters,
those who produced me;
how shall I engender the next?
What will the daughters create
that depends, in part, on me?

I would wish my work, brief as violets,
to be at least as heartening.

II.

This morning early, light
ran her hand along the mountain’s flank.
Where she stroked,
light lay down and cleaved like a lover.
Valleys stayed dark in long patches,
sighing, no doubt, for her touch
Along the places she caressed
I let my own eyes linger,
and absorbed her warm affection.

How is it I am, in the dawnings,
aware of cosmic boundlessness
but in the dusk, recall only
my local self, reduced and curbed?
When the sun comes, I soar;
when she seems to leave,
I forget connections, enter seclusion,
must labor to remain awake
to my kinship with everything.

This morning, early,
I sang through the curtain of time
to my grandmother as a child
playing in her Italian village.
I waved and she took my hand.
When I told her she would be
a lady of fine hats, she laughed.
Now at twilight, I don’t know why
I am alone, or how to bear it,
family and friends as far away
as my gone-befores.

III.

The daisy beckons me,
her pupil scarlet-dark and wide.
How could I be alive, and not before
have perceived the thick fringe
of her iris, dotted with pollen,
and the furry circle of red around it?
In a deep orange corona,
her petals’ overlapping layers
summon my eye like a lover.

This morning a daisy
rousts me awake.
Her blooming shouts out,
Come close! I have a rendezvous
in the sexy, present moment
with a single, racey daisy.
I show up dancing in bangles,
and sing! Sing
my silver song of acquiescence.