1
The moon has a larder
and a kitchen,
wears a nightcap
as Father in the Night Before Christmas.

2
The moon hoards pistachios,
marzipan
commands the shadows
is mustachioed
sleeps in a sloop
(at least when I look)
like the boat
owl and pussycat
took to sea.

3
And on country nights
in high summer
fishing nets seem drawn
about his face,
reveal ribbons of light,
eerie panhandlers grubbing quarters;
a sinister sailor with a sack
on a pitch black wharf.

4
Between clouds,
leafy barques
the hinge reflected on the
thick, ashen door
the moon will pirate
your senses
set them adrift
amidst twilight islands
in the mind's Outer Hebrides
where mystery is king
and the hem of robe you kiss
is an envelope pilfered.

[9]

1
A thick hole in the dark
from which
stars pour silver
as in pails
their runny divide
ink-strewn scalps
torn from the roof of the sky.

2
Padded footprints
giant ferns blooming
constellation prints,
the wind an athlete
pacing about a track
drying thru fingerprints
thin, nectarine light.

3
Sand down whitest skin
moving past your hand
a gown, mauve to green,
iceberg lettuce,
the black festering
across a ribcage;
while night arranges
moths to dusting powder
pucker-lipped
fronds from afar

4
Afar, the word a gypsy
tangled in the waves,
foam from a medicine bottle
agitated and strewn,
bubbles calculated in gasps
light into the distance
forlorn
tree-frogs, the cricket
sound round deep
--movement of night as
a rumbling in the ground,

[10]

In the crypt with Columbus
in the crypt with Giovanni
of Genoa, the diaspora driven Jew;
watching flecks of the cathedral floor
jade-eyed and mica afraid
yawning down brown the abyss, his skeletal coffin
thin accae wood,
phlegm coloured
flamed ointment
of the saints
in holy water
bridging the little centuries.

2
Serpentine heavens
in coiled stars
heaving like passion fruit
hung down piano wire.

3
Meteors douse the light
of black stems,
eye holes cut of old Spanish
sailors; thin ghosts
plundering night.

4
Melange tableaux
peut-étre les étoiles
sont oiseaux.

[11]

The moon hummed like a refrigerator,
light thru shadows
--the solitude of dusk closing in;
black scars visible across
the moon's face shaped like
mountainous hands, all
silent, the occasional leaf rustling.

2
My fork at plate's edge listening,
listening to the haunting one eye
on the staircase wall white
as the numb light outside palest night.
Caught off-guard, the musty settee
and armchair acting as hallucinogen
to the nostril, the calendar of events
playing ghostly tag with sheer curtains
hovering, shroud-like, on the family Bible
big and brown as the Lord's foot stool.

3
The unravelling tale slowly much as
thick yarn with a kitten
batting it, one event at a time
in sepulchre movement down a
linoleum floor. Two twins burning,
fever scalded in frigid water only
shock setting in, dying to join
the black creek water from which
her unwilling buckets borrowed
this liquid crucifixion and bitter vinegar.

4
Or the drive-house door, silent in precision,
unseen hands before marauding
hoofs in unison dark from windows' edge
to better hear little poke of
sleigh bells or harness rattling grim
with a sick man's cough.



5
This admission of spectral animals
somehow more unsettling than
the young woman next