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Presence
By Ed Friedman
Snow all day today
Makes a permanent white wake
Across the water
Irrevocable as fresh
Pressed in us
Are deep still pools
That flow away
Beyond the moon
Setting in cold
The color of easter lilies
We believe everything
Covered with clouds
Sustains the world
The moon is full
A pale gold rose
Surrounded by aphids
We break off
A piece of story or memory
And stand at my hoe
Addressing its revolutionary potential
Old styles of ownership obliterated
You say "I will come"
How often in life
Then arrive
Deep in intention
More lucid from struggle
The moonlight
Plays on cloth
Printed with fernbrush
Our uncertainty
Of the most remote mountain air
Diminishes
So beautiful and disordered
We think of days
As much as nights at night
And as much of the living as the dead
Regarding each memory
As vital and extinguished aspects
I was there and there and there
With you and you
Awake all over the world
Considering each demeanor
Pulling sleeve from sleeve
In the glimpse
A current of ocean stream
Temple bells
Nothing is better forgotten
Some sanitation men
At a seaside landfill
Up the coast
Fly swallows who are famous
Completely as strange
As snow falling
Perfumed with gardenias
That hang through it
Each morning
Dreams form
Snow all day yesterday
And hoeing the vegetables in moonlight
Together we look
Of hair and revolution
Darkening slim beach
Ready as we come
In tidal stillness
That would be today
Pillowed on your arm
A blue mountain
Among pine barrens
Clouds bank in excess
The haze invisibly at dusk
Tangles in the sunset
Dyed blue and mandarin red
Overwhelmed with lath
Cinnamon, cross hatches
To set the conditions
Establish prevailings
Strip in the courses
Re-create uncertainty
Every morning
There is nothing I love more
Than being and not being
Gathering ourselves
After sleeping with mind
Of years gone by
Like anklets
The night still
Snow falling in hisses
You stand
On a floating footbridge
Light through recall
Having completely
Changed position
I write again
To my pen pals in Haiti
Dissipate clear sky
With a narrow view
As mists rise
And dews settle
In winter wheat fields
To love and feel them
Rustle in the wind
Go back and forth
All day in a hut
Roofed with coarse grass mat
Lagoon out the door
With harmonizing flamingos
A path of damp walked-over reeds
Leads us to watch motor boat lamps
From a mountain village
Inscribe the harbor
Where everyone reads
Foreheads and perfumes
Earlobes dabbed with rose water
We sing "Mammy" for them
"Oh boy!" they reply
In several Mayan dialects
"You must visit the pyramids
Next time and grow stronger
From the brush with living history
Before your eyes
But behind your eyelids"
The collections of thought
Comprising civilizations
How many still remain
And who owns them
Long forgotten
Foreseen and forgotten
Do I make you cry
In our aloof village
Of a thousand years?
And why now as you're before me
Do I long for you
As if we were ancient?
The day having become its mannerisms
I walk away
Into the sunset
Through dawn
I feel loneliness
Leave upward
Between one night and the next
The deer drink from a melting pond
And mistake the winter moon for fire
Lilies that no one visits
A meadow lark
Salt to the skin of your girl's body
From carhop
Through overpass
Beyond the cloud-cover's
Divinely shaped rims
Ready when you come
The memories of our long love
A stream of dye markers
Toward affection
Hands are there and moons
By yellow rays
The dew-touched dark roads
Tides cover the sand bars
And dusk alone
With something
Never mentioned
Lowers branches of the crab apple tree
Into colored shadow
I will leave you
And then return
Which is what we mean
By "together"
That even ancient companions
Thought "waning"
As they watched the moonlight
Spread and go out
Break off
Never really happen
A wisp of thought
Now it's cloudy morning
And at my birthplace
There too is burning
The end of the night
A sonic boom and a cicada
Your dark hair
Hennaed and fragrant
The sunrise glows
Through the night
Are you thinking of something
Like dew
Reflecting the moon-white sky
We turn here
And remember days
The cranes fly across
I will see you again
And grow closer
Thing to thing
Along waters
Fluid with oncoming
So beautiful
In all your rings
You can tell me
Daylight makes the swallows sing
The moon over the Battery Tunnel
Makes the gulls cry
Buds on snow-covered
Cherry branches
Discernible dusk
The little tiny birds
In an Alfred Hitchcock movie
Rice leaves
Palisades empty
My long hair
Dishevelled by
The life of me
In a net of fireflies
I have always known
We are involuntarily frail
And must now recover
With many questions
Late into the night
A showy floral field
Blue hyacinths and coral tulips
We never forget a moon
The mists rise over
Who'd come and say goodbye
To winter or spring
And be definite about it
Intimate dawn
Flooded rice fields
Of someone else's memory
Brought home or to mind
The atmosphere without wind
As sparrows know it
Secluded in a wet skirt
Of meadows and sleep
Winnowing the world
So steady in dream
lingo 4
 Books in print by Ed Friedman
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