Gabriel Safdie
at the rivermouth
we walked out the longest way
to sea suddenly turned
we met the tide engulfing
hurrying inland over
rippling mounds of mud
quickening (as we were)
in rilling currents over
cockle beds ground
shellfish green and rust
seaweeds pulling shoreward
a creamy foam frothed
swirling up our ankles and
two empty crab shells afloat
rushing silently past
larval dream
i wish i
could lie with you
for the rest
of this life
all curled up
in a cocoon
then we could rise
as twin butterflies
to spend
one endless day
in the sun
journey to love
don't believe me when i tell you
i love you for as my words devolve
they give no more reassurance than
their easy predecessors—also words
yet stretched out as we are here
embracing on the sofa remember when
just like now through the open window
blew in on us that gust how engulfing
was that glow of ethereal tongues and we
naked sipping our full red wine
meanwhile the tumultuous rose
stems crimson from the clear decanter
poised upon the laden white bookshelf
the air subtly invaded by its scent
with thorns darting shivers down my spine
over which sings an egyptian diva
the strings played cleaving to her voice
just as the silk clings to your skin
while the room's become a drum's inside
to a beat tracing the longest journey
where love isn't made out of language
but from the intricacies of the route
woman and crane: graffito
on the vast wall
of a central service station
a stylized painting of
a naked woman
her arched body flung back
into an almost circle
to convey ecstasy
with her feet and hands
almost meeting to intimate
the sun with her glaring
yellow against morocco
blue she faces a tow truck:
a colossal craned tip
erected to touching her
thighs' parted lips
in concert
the giggles and the scattered shrieks
rose with the crowd's reseating
the eliciting intruder a graceful bat
soon caught the shifting throng of heads
to and fro throughout the vast hall
and seeming not to seek a passage out
it looked content to glide about our midst
a veritable stranger to these parts
this blood relation an atavistic mystery
from a nocturnal mythic past to us
who greeted him with fear-tinged laughter
till someone's coat was flung to net him
then turn him out into the night
to wild applause as for a master's work ...
but even to the Brahms an echo hovered
a ghost accompaniment in web-winged flight
a memory batting through the soaring movements
before receding unto dim primeval lairs
inscape
a snow bound landscape
a sigh at a window
breath revealing
patterns on a pane
two names
keep quickly disappearing
against the cold
on a bus pointing south
now the snow
slowly diminishes slowly
diminishing
toward a time
all will be gone
while turning under me
ever unravelling
the curvature of your ground
still
travelling on