meetings.
Twilight and headlights on the new
hard roads, boy friend and girl friend,
dreams, romance, bread, wages, babies,
homes.
If So Hap May Be
Be somber with those in smoke garments.
Laugh with those eating bitter weeds.
Burn your love with bold flame blossoms,
    if so hap may be.
Leave him with a soft snowfall memory,
    if so hap may be.
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***
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    Never came winter stars more clear
    yet the stars lost themselves
    midnight came snow-wrought snow-blown.
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***
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Kisses, Can You Come Back Like Ghosts?
If we ask you to gleam through the tears,
Kisses, can you came back like ghosts?
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Today, tomorrow, the gateways take them.
âAlways some door eats my shadow.â
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Love is a clock and the works wear out.
Love is a violin and the wood rots.
Love is a day with night at the end.
Love is a summer with falltime after.
Love dies always and when it dies it is dead
And when it is dead there is nothing more to it
And when there is nothing more to it then we say
This is the end, it comes always, it came to us.
And now we will bury it and put it away
Beautifully and decently, like a clock or a violin,
Like a summer day near fall time,
Like any lovely thing brought to the expected end.
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Yes, let it go at that.
The clock rang and we answered.
The moon swept an old valley.
And we counted all of its rings.
The water-birds flipped in the river
And flicked their wing-points in sunset gold.
To the moon and the river water-birds,
To these we answered as the high calls rang.
And now? Now we take the clock and put it away.
Now we count again the rings of the valley moon
and put them away as keepsakes.
Now we count the river-birds once more and let
them slip loose and slip up the valley curve.
This is the end, there is always an end.
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Kisses, can you
come back
       like ghosts?
Lake Michigan Morning
Blue and white came out,
Riders of an early fall morning,
The blue by itself, the white by itself.
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A young lamb white
crossed on a clear water blue.
Blue rollers talked on a beach white sand.
Water blown from snowwhite mountains
met the blue rise of lowland waters.
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This was an early morning of high price.
Blue bowls of white water
Poured themselves into white bowls of blue water.
There was a back-and-forth and a kiss-me kill-me
washing and weaving.
New Weather
Mist came up as a manâs hand.
Fog lifted as a womanâs shawl.
Fair weather rode in with a blue oath.
One large cloud bellied in a white wind.
Two new winds joined for weather.
Splinters of rain broke out of the west.
Blue rains soaked in a lowland loam.
The dahlia leaves are points of red.
Bees roam singing in the buckwheat.
Russet and gold are the wheatstraws.
Forgotten bells fade and change.
Forgetful bells fill the air.
Fog shawls and mist hands come again.
New weather weaves new garments.
Lesson
In early April the trees
end their winter waiting
with a creep of green on branches.
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***
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  In early October the trees
  listen for a wind crying,
  for leaves whirling.
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    The face of the river by night
    holds a scatter of stars
    and the silence of summer blossoms
    falling to the moving water.
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***
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        Come clean with a child heart.
        Laugh as peaches in the summer wind.
        Let rain on a house roof be a song.
        Let the writing on your face
           be a smell of apple orchards in late June.
Metamorphosis
When water turns ice does it remember
one time it was water?
When ice turns back into water does it
remember it was ice?
Love Beyond Keeping
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