the holding of light

you know the pool in love canal,
my now girlfriend, the one that loves
Jesus, the one that might be the one
says over the phone, i am not on the phone
but answer, yes i know it-
yes i know
it holds deep blue benzine and
bubbles of pure noon
each a container of sun, and I know
that it has recorded
my youth, silent
as a spring of hard iron
water constant as limestone
time runs to it
like my fathers love, a combination
of duty and anger,
the quiet maleness of doing
the manifesting disfigured intention
a rage of convention, defines civilization
digging holes and filling them in
finding purpose in the action -alone
the auto drive to work
the cage a woman becomes,
after she calms the sea, gray with
anger so deep
it is white
and she
provides earnest flying lessons
to those birds of desire
the ego like a window on fire with
mornings to come, and a finality
in the mourning of moving,
hands and dwellings
first one home then two- 4 houses
split parceled out like seconds swept
clean by a hand counting the
minutes we
dwell in becoming whole
recordable truths, a pool dug
in dirty soil, soiled dirt
its is a simple list of the
sacrilege, my parents
grocery list become confused
in the milk and eggs of everyday, as
we would shoehorn church in to the yawn of
Sunday morning, my spirit longing for
the tragic, the blood i knew was true
now though i know the water
is cold, and the chlorine is
strong as white stones, and the only
poisons swimming in the deep end
is the past that threatens to stop me
and pull me down past the embers of midday
fracturing time and propriety
where i and he and this 91st street pool become
one thing, and just the memory
is whispered, like a gust, a God
through the leaves of an aspen tree.