Thunderstorm Desire

I. window mesmerizes

Outside a man builds a fire
as a storm wind breaks the calm
of the spring trees, the silk in the window
blowing like a dream in an undertow.

Like waiting for a lover I sit by the open window
thunder sounding like the opening of a familiar door
rain stinging through the screen paints the inner glass pane
and all is obscured, the hollow sound of it on the tin roof

reminds me of the wine I’ve been waiting for,
the desire for an open window on a winter night
for hair to splay in small ringlets about my face, any face,
quivering, like sleeping eyelids, in a sudden breeze.

Smoke and dust beaten down into the road
a velvet hat falls from its nail on the wall
I think of how I loved you once;
a hot night in July, asking to stop,
not wanting to miss even one golden streak
of electric summer lightning.
Only now the birches and poplars obscure the sky
and the solemn black dancers in the branches
distract me.

II. distraction

Some days I can’t see the road and I imagine instead
a great veranda looking out onto some Tolstoy-esque
meadow, a dell of rare trees, an orchard fenced by willow gates
where my only daily tasks were to play over and over the Moonlight Sonata,
and to kiss the neck of my nurse-maid, fan myself at noon
on a bench with a bowl of cherries and cream beginning to curdle in the heat.

III. coming to

May! you and I are older now…how can you still deny the death of March?
Languid you may be, steeped in fluid dreams of thunderstorms and dandelions
but a heavy delirium weighs upon us, intoxicated in your fragrant memory,

(Hiding in fields of tall grass, gathering night crawlers at midnight with a full moon,forging the river, slippery rocks underfoot, holding a breath forever)

And sunken into breathless stupor the wind dies.
Nothing having landed where it ought to lay
we wrap out hearts in wax-paper and pretend
we are not missing.