Honey and Salt Read Online Free Page B

    She had a box
    with a million red silk bandannas for him.
        She gave them to him
        one by one or by thousands,
        saying then she had not enough for him.
    Â 
    She had languages and landscapes
    on her lips and the end of her tongue,
    landscapes of sunny hills and changing fogs,
    of houses falling and people within falling,
of a left-handed man
    who died for a woman who went out of her mind,
of a guitar player
    who died with fingers reaching for strings,
of a man whose heart stopped
    as his hand went out to put a pawn forward
on the fifth day of one game of chess,
        of five gay women
        stricken and lost
        amid the javelins and chants
        of love beyond keeping.

Moods
    The same gold of summer was on the winter hills,
    the oat straw gold, the gold of slow sun change.
    Â 
    The stubble was chilly and lonesome,
    the stub feet clomb up the hills and stood.
    Â 
    The flat cry of one wheeling crow faded and came,
    ran on the stub gold flats and faded and came.
    Â 
    Fade-me, find-me, slow lights rang their changes
    on the flats of oat straw gold on winter hills.
    Â 
    ***
    Â 
    ***
    Â 
    Use your skypiece.
    Let the works of your noggin run.
    Try one way, try another, throw away
and throw away, junk your first,
your second, junk sixty-six.
    Keep your skypiece going, your noggin
running, sit with your eyes shut
and your thumbs quiet as two
sleeping mice.

Moon Rondeau
    â€œLove is a door we shall open together.”
    So they told each other under the moon
    One evening when the smell of leaf mould
    And the beginnings of roses and potatoes
    Came on a wind.
    Â 
    Late in the hours of that evening
    They looked long at the moon and called it
    A silver button, a copper coin, a bronze wafer,
    A plaque of gold, a vanished diadem,
    A brass hat dripping from deep waters.
    Â 
        “People like us,
              us two,
        We own the moon.”

Little Word, Little White Bird
    Love, is it a cat with claws and wild mate screams
in the black night?
    Love, is it a bird—a goldfinch with a burnish
on its wingtips or a little gray sparrow
picking crumbs, hunting crumbs?
    Love, is it a tug at the heart that comes high and
costs, always costs, as long as you have it?
    Love, is it a free glad spender, ready to spend to
the limit, and then go head over heels in debt?
    Love, can it hit one without hitting two and leave
the one lost and groping?
    Love, can you pick it up like a mouse and put it in
your pocket and take it to your room and bring it
out of your pocket and say,
        O here is my love,
        my little pretty mousey love?
    Â 
    ***
    Â 
    ***
    Â 
    Yes—love, this little word you hear about,
is love an elephant and you step out of the way
where the elephant comes trampling, tromping,
traveling with big feet and long flaps of
drooping ears and straight white ivory tusks—
and you step out of the way with respect,
with high respect, and surprise near to shock
as you say,
        Dear God, he’s big,
        big like stupendous is big,
        heavy and elephantine and funny,
        immense and slow and easy.
I’m asking, is love an elephant?
    Or could it be love is a snake—like a rattlesnake,
like a creeping winding slithering rattlesnake
with fangs—poison fangs they tell me,
and when the bite of it gets you
then you run crying for help
if you don’t fall cold and dead on the way.
    Can love be a snake?
    Â 
    Or would you say love is a flamingo, with pink
    Â                                                  feathers—
   a soft sunset pink, a sweet gleaming naked