water running over stone
be the blood within my bone
water running over stone
take me and make me your own
pilgrimage
now that the flame has died which burned in us
burned too intense for living with, beside
and we have cooled to the quieter dust
so comfortably and separately you and I
let us lift to the wind and drift from our pyre
as passionlessly and still as those destined
candles of the mind whose pilgrimage through night
ends with a dawn cold white and all their flames relit
washday in the tropics
the sun tropics down my days
with heat of roof and balcony
drying me out like morning's wash
on mudbaked brick and shrubbery
the clouds are bleached by lye and ash
to make a stiff and faultless sky
and spotless leaves hang limp on trees
without the energy to die
flies buzz... cock calls... the hammock swings
with eye asquint to palmribbed light
while smoke coughs up the desert air
between straw sips of cool and white