Bill Mayer

Drei Poesies

 

 

Wasserflut

Flood Water

 

It is not enough to get lost in the snow
and not see the road
Nothing is enough white-out or explanation
wind-up toy or the tin woodsman Nothing
reduces so much as denial.
Lies a shame
but not so fine as failure

I have been waiting for the snow-plow
to come and get me out.
I drink coffee from a thermos
and wonder about the numbness descending
after anger. I am becoming time-lapse
without definition Zone Ten.
There are so many ways to lose one another,
who is to say which is worst?

She sat on a bench in the sun talking to a friend:
I will not love that way again. Ever.
Her anger. Face up, hard against the wind.
It gets back here third hand.

 

 

 

Auf dem Fluße

On the River

 

A past you are afraid to re-enter

Avoiding the neighborhood where she lived
our friends who were hers primarily
that's the easy part not so easy though
to avoid what we loved mutually
what we made ours that country Greece
where she has gone I further north
past and future

we cannot wait for one another
can only hope to be there
when she arrives
or the reverse if she wants to
if we have not changed too much
You don't learn not to love
but what do you learn what is left
at the bottom of the glass

One cannot look and cannot turn away

 

 

 

Irrlicht

Will o' the Wisp

 

If this were illusion
The devil must be envious of what we have
to take it all away
As though nothing happened
A chunk fallen into the sea this
the sign says was where History was
Dutiful and instructed A dying fall
In my garden I am hunting for shards
the three fine pieces of Parian marble
she found wedged in the old stone wall
Not Archaeology Under the yellow oxalis
I know I do not want to sleep with you
That I remember
the fierce self-concentrated face as she spoke
If it were illusion
Of not being wanted for years
Whether Romantic love was but a destructive fantasy
I would not want it so
Holding and tearing apart
A decision or just acceptance
Go to sleep then

go to sleep

you can't