Friday the 13th! It figures I’d have no notebook entries to offer—the week given over to essay grading and panicked clients with last-minute projects. So, in place of new material, a couple of duds from the vault, both from 1975. The first was never published:

The Gift

I’ve a man inside me whose fingers
are translucent candles—a surgeon’s
fingers, or a priest’s: the nails
are pared to round, pink flames.
He unties the blue threads
lacing my flesh to these bones,
unwraps me like a birthday package.
Inside, the heart his touch burns
to open—containing black ash.
Of a photograph? Coil of dead hair?
Baby’s tear? Mustard seed? Love letter?

The next one was published back in 1976 in a wonderful anthology of local (Denver) poets called Sight Unseen. (My poem was the only clinker.) I submitted the poem without knowing what the editor, Steve Grout, planned to call the collection, so I imagine he was surprised when it came floating over the transom (in the days when there were still transoms)—for obvious reasons….

Milkweed on a Windy Spring Day

From the unexplored distances of the Present
(which we call the Future) a wind
strong as this one, stirring
from is source beyond the mountains,

will rise

and our eyes will
split
wide awake:

Light

will uproot our optic nerves
and send them flying
like these syllables of silky fire

inward

over the black rain-wet earth of beginnings.