Poems

Before the storm arrived we

opened all the windows of the house

and chased each other through the rooms,

a trail of clothes behind us, except for a

skull-and-cross-boned, black-and-white

pirate sock, the only thing you wore

as we fell into the sheets and began to

paint each other.

I heard the sound of falling leaves

beneath your breasts and tides and rivers

flowing underneath your skin before

I wandered lost and dancing in the forest

of your hair as you gently kissed my

eyes and curled up in the green

and golden meadow you had

painted on my back.

We were too preoccupied with each

other’s sky-blue skin and

cumulo-nimbus shoulders to pay

attention to the curtains blooming in the

wind or to the almond trees that

burst up through the weeds around the

bed or even to the falling snow that

piled up on the bedspread and the pillows.

We scandalized the owls and the porcupines.

We even made the rabbits blush.

We fooled around.

We misbehaved.

We bathed in our own laughter as

the morning sun arrived to wrap

us in its warmth.

© 2010 J.M. Keating

On this lovely afternoon in early Spring

I hope you hear the robins singing

And the conversations of the ravens

Croaking to each other croaky corvid things.

May you also see the crowns of oaks

and maples blooming into green and

watch tulips and narcissus stretch their

fingers up towards stars we cannot see.

And speaking of the heavens,

I hope that on this afternoon you’ve found

a little time to sit alone — a book, a sip of wine–

beneath a placid sky with perhaps a cloud

or two and with sufficient time

to paint your toenails blue.

© J.M.Keating, 2012

Today I want to make an altar

from the beauty of this day

and offer it to her–

the one without a mask,

the one whose eyes are peonies,

the one who opens hearts like wings.

On this altar she’ll discover the

sliver of a new-born moon,

a violin that dreams of Barcelona,

three tulips floating in a bowl of tears,

a curl of smoke, one candle,

but no flame, a book of hymns

to Aphrodite and two towers on a hill

at dusk, above the sea.

She’ll find a mask made from hours

splintered from the clock,

a mask behind a mask,

of amber-colored leaves,

a brow, transparent as the sky,

a throat of feathers painted blue,

a hidden, restless heart that

dreams of seas and winds.

Today I make an altar

from the beauty of this day

and give it to the flower-eyed one,

the one who needs no masks,

as if it were a nest of clouds

in which two red birds sing.

© 2004 J.M. Keating