Richard Bunch

After so many winters, the summer’s
Sun swims these worn hands and brightens the wine-
Shouldered hills. Coming home, no more going
Far, far away, I bring these memories
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from here you can watch
waves blaze into

horizons that bleed and stretch
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At the mercy of the wood warp
of indecision, between the famine
within and a compass without range,
I still dance in a sea penciled with despair
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You get masked by the lines sometimes
like bluish dye, in the shape of
a wolf’s rib, shot through frost
or that other tigress, fire, though
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We surrendered
through our cravings, embraced

furies in those philosophic limbs.
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Green sloped searching hills
splash toward the sea
with its dissolving beaches
and cormorants diving.
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“Sorta cigar shaped, ” she urged.

“Go get the ball, Orbis, ” said another.
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This evening
ruffles of surf
draw out shrinking sand.
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Today I can think of nothing to say.
Just listening to mute slivers of grass
As pink blossoms sputter around the path.
Fields of sunbright mustard throb in the day’s
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Can you finger that skyey
Riot come of age with frost, mountains
Furrowed, the tympanics of spring?
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among yellow stamens
and this salmon sunset—
a swan’s head
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sunsets aflame
dance
fiercest orange
yielding red
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There were survivors in your family
Too. Before the kingdoms of Benin and
Ashoka’s India, you survived it
All: denying spirit to matter, and
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We kiss beneath white wild stars
and open this earthly summer.
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Our voices no longer tend to unison
In these boats drifting across dark waters,
No renaissance culls an older wisdom
From city lights or pain’s empty daughter.
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A windy, clear day
in the soul of the body’s wartime-
gray.
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1.

Mary lived to bury her sisters and died
bite by bite by the sheer loss of earth.
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Time pressing
the color of blood.

You want to scream
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No way to win this one, I thought, no way
Since these jocks leaped hurdles faster than I
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