Night Dance

for Henri Roussea, who knew by heart what he had never seen

Some atmospheres invented wings, some stars made planets
so a mountain laughed in the dark,
heart lumped in redness
and life, a knot of
“I want,” raw and velvet
in the afternoon.
Then love lifted
a hard question into the window so all who passed
could see it, saying
“Here is the painted moon the lion was under
whose exquisite sense of smell
led him to a large human being
with a small guitar,
sleeping alone in the cold desert,
but the lion wasn’t hungry, he was interested
in someone wearing a garment
with every stripe a different color,
he wanted to listen in silence
to the scent of armpits, genitals and feet.”
When the child of war rides her black horse
past burnt trees, and crows tug
at the dead and nearly dead,
let a mother tell the generals to end it.
Somewhere there’s a jungle
filled with impossible flowers,
immense leaves
in every shade of green.
There's a man in shadow
whose songs fill the holes between fictions,
a woman who isn’t afraid
when a marvelous beast approaches.