Virginia Dare

She goes where the dark is quiet,
inside the circle of crickets,
in her house she watches storms from.
The music she plays fills the room.
Rain falls. She is dancing alone
. . . there could never be such a scene.

When I believed I could see her,
she knew better: I’m not there now.
I imagined her. Who could know
her? she who spoke in metaphors
only her fathers understood,
each of whom called himself husband.

In a dream there dwells the same ship
without the shadow of her shape.

(10 October 2013)

copyright 2013 by Floyce Alexander

The Infallible

Our thinking triggers alarms.
It’s in her head, his fingers.
If we are doomed, why go on?
No one’s been through before!
Why not continue? Go where?
There. No, that way! Stay here.
(The infallible wait at Sion.*
Swiss banks still open,
coffers overflowing. Makers
destroy the male and female
we carefully renamed takers,
say the swaggerers, truly
pigs at the trough, infallibly.)
Everything must be for sale.
__________________________
* not Mount Sion or Zion,
but the Swiss capital of Valais, 
bordering on France and Italy

(9 October 2013)

copyright 2013 by Floyce Alexander

Manna for the Lost

Unaware, one step goes in before the other pulls the body out of a hole
in the earth deeper than a grave. The upright ones go quietly around;
the obedient clamor for a crust and sip. They tend the dark that smells
of rain. I have been nowhere and you are here. It is the luck of the lost.

You were all I could have ever wanted. A green life, a willowy soul.
So many do not even know how it is to desire what eventually arrives.
They go everywhere, but settle nowhere. There is an enormous sound
in their hearts hollow with need. It is the manna we sent for to save us.

(7 October 2013)

copyright 2013 by Floyce Alexander

CROATAN

Nothing is new that was not here before,
land coveting sounds with light as in dark.
Parchment wrinkles. Sun slurs the smell of fire
beyond the clearing that bears its charred mark.
I have gone nowhere I did not stay late,
or longer. Memory may hold such weight.

Who is I? Old man who was never young,
or you, who wear your body like a kiss
and fuel love in the distance between us.
Passion carries fury to endure long
after. What comes before will never leave.
We have felt many loves threading our lives.

I walk alone at sundown through these hills.
Wind stirs. Clouds slice the moon. When do you sail?

(6 October 2013)

copyright 2013 by Floyce Alexander

Where Virginia Is

The ship leaves and returning finds no one.
Of cars and trains nothing is known.
Imagine now: No money in the house
for flight. Forget the future, take the coach.
Go south, then east, through enemy country
looking everywhere she might be.
You are stubborn, Sir, you brook no reproach.
Knuckles sore, walk and beg, holding close watch
over the pooling blood that keeps a heart
seeking her through the Southern heat.

(5 October 2013)

copyright 2013 by Floyce Alexander

Roanoke

for Virginia Dare

I sat, I thought, I stood, I passed. I stray:
Why, such a long ride to the Outer Banks!
Yet not so far. Those without wings have time.

She waits not for song but for its body.
Who drowns in no Atlantic found in books?
Inland, her breath gathers song with wet love.

(4 October 2013)

copyright 2013 by Floyce Alexander

Fascicle [15]

fifteen

No time for the backwater sludge to clear.
Spanish moss. Crocs skid down. Who loves in mud
loves deep. Hate, indifference, roar of crowds:
whirlpool, tangle, mesh. You must remember
where moons dissolve, or seem to, sun comes up.
Four legs, not two, a slide of flesh to slip
the noose of absence. Who are the just born?
Oaths uttered, baptism, consummation . . .

(1 October 2013)

copyright 2013 by Floyce Alexander