Gacela of the Inner Givens
for Molly Gaudry
no one ever says the right thing in your sleep
of midnight blue and black stars.
No one can say the single word
that makes your colors want to sing.
A hundred brushstrokes of Persian blue
and green shifts in the window of your brow.
You want someone to push your cloudy hair,
watch the colors of your face—the slipping
of orange to magenta to yellow to crimson.
Your eyelids have a blue song tattooed on them.
You say the word satellite in sleep. Behind
your forehead someone prepares the seed
of the moon. She has grown it into a body—
yours. She conjures sap and blood.
She holds it in the cup of her hand,
and offers it to you without words.
Gacela of a Redwing Blackbird
for Peter Conners
It is only a blackbird singing
at the orange remnants of the moon.
You say not to believe the song—
there is no dead of night, only the long
body of stars, mirroring our own.
Do not believe what the poets say—
the night is not cruel. Love is a blackbird
wing, small heart upon its sleeve.
What the blackbird sees of the night—
those impossible crumbs shining brightly;
that orange worm taunting the horizon.
You know what's true: the night is a blackbird
song sung with that hunger known to be
empty as the black space between stars.
You stretch out your wings, o red sleeve
heart, O blackbird fly at the starry spiral wing.
The Moment Before Waking
for Brianna Noll
your hand is hovering above the small creature that has come to see what you are: it has a life of its own: even though it is clearly the hand you were born with: everything else is your hair: taking on different forms: grass: leaves: the bark and the blossoms: another creature begins to lead you away by a lock: something else has wrapped a nest out of your eddies and tides: you want to pet the little visitor: but like children: you are not sure how the gesture will be received: beyond all this: light is becoming music: wispy reeds and high strings: it’s haunting and unfamiliarly familiar: like seeing your own hair or hand in places you’ve never been
J. P. Dancing Bear is the author nine collections of poetry, most recently, Conflicted Light (SalmonPoetry, 2008). His poems have been published in DIAGRAM, No Tell Motel, Verse Daily and others. He is editor for the American Poetry Journal and Dream Horse Press. His next book, Inner Cities of Gulls is due out by SalmonPoetry in 2010.