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.

The Beekeeper (Eliot Cardinaux)

  The Beekeeper


For an accepted (norm),
  I might add color
 to the color that already was

  facing south, and wind-west,
   where summer is,
 all the year, ’round and ’round.

Sound about the body-curve,
  Sound about the olive,
 in so wrecking

what fort I have made,

  or may, or may have, counting stars,
   all this year, ’round and ’round
 who are, yet near.

                        And counted, all the stones
          I have,
   come in droves
             
      the bees that have gone,
      the bees that have, as they must,
      a feeling of home, or home lost,

   and beating out their wings,
  furiously, at whose command?


2/11  ’11

Shell for a spectator (Eliot Cardinaux)

  Shell for a spectator

               Sky, pure sky,

               empty with the words

                 of protest

               splashing against

                        its dome

            I will growl,

               into the

                        night

              music, with its

                           orange

                     calliope of smoke

                 a dance,

                        for beauty,

                 you are a woman,

                         freely moving,

                the shells at his feet,

                  where is he gone?

                  into the black and white

 

                           leaves
                a scarcity on trees,

scarcely moving,

                  twirling, spinning,

                        no one

                               is empty
                                               at all.

 

2/10  ’11