The Deep Skies (Eliot Cardinaux)

The Deep Skies

There is coming to be

a land, that stretches

out with hope.

But space, I think,

the quiet living room,

the couch,

the slow days,

all I feel is somehow

not a part of it,

as if tomorrow

were the reason to live.

The stillness is aware of you,

down the window, the rain softly drips.

Past the broken lights, do you see,

the brown eyes of the mare, and past that, oblivion?

We were not charged with the building of walls,

the wide eyed terror, our gentle son,

falls over those who sleep with a gentle hum,

we sow in the deep skies our poplars of darkness.

The First Rose (Eliot Cardinaux)

The First Rose


When they carry you,
learning, all is newness
and you go to be

caught up in it,
the tumbling, whirling bells,
o, the bells

caught me
in waking where it was,
seeing the small sea.

I had always thought:
this so-small sea,
and in it were my hope

and chance to find,
reasons,
where spring water

moves away
like honey,
to the land.

I see now, your eyes
bearing down.
If there never was

a first rose,
sweet bells, o say
goodbye.



3/5  '11

Strophes (eliot cardinaux)

  Strophes

Where questions

  sit between

the ear

  and flecks of snow

the stream,

  time, falling,

catching

  the crying of kings.

Snow (Eliot Cardinaux)

Snow

As a desert does not know,

as oceans I find,

As I wake up,

    the heavy snow

    drifts over footfalls

    laying it

    bare on the hill;

bones and features –

stone’s memory,

a seashell;

but I looked

    and they were gone

just as the one

who moved her head

and laughed

had gone inside her season,

I went like snow into the ocean;

this is how it ends and begins.

2/21  ’11

The Insects (Eliot Cardinaux)

The Insects

Over the land

you hear them tossing

across millennia of space,

the rabbit comes out

to show them

springs mouth

stuffed with white gauze,

the first side of death

making the sun bloom

in the night.  

Our effervescence

charmed those hunters

until all that was left

was a whole

emptiness

from which our yearning sprung;

delighted

in the malleable sound

(for tender resolve

warped our history,

made of it our

stone-ancestry)

and would weeks

span out, we could

have seen our standing

at the sun-close day.

Bare Trees (Eliot Cardinaux)

 

Bare Trees

Is it you that I search for

as you watch me

(and will I ever find)

but questions

Bare trees

purple in the snow

And there are some

that will go

into the deep halls

without expecting

and some silence

others still

will hold forever in their hands

But you who will

spite the echo

have far fewer hands

and left them there,

like water

through water,

both sides;

it stands.

The Elk (Eliot Cardinaux)

 

The Elk

Naked I step out among you

but the land is only land.

Whistlers in the thicket

the traveler sets his bags

down

has turned into the

night

and stammered.

They wear on their backs

as fleas.

Like death to watch

were the storm infinite

and how the houses cold

the sun new,

the elk

live long, remember;

 

like summer, 

taking off the hats.