Donald Revell

 

THE PIANO LESSON

                                                                       for Karla Kelsey

A few notes, like planets of the remaining
Color, hunger here, sated only by distance,
Only by distance sated. There are no cabs.

Our Spaniard, perhaps as near as the next room,
Would bellow pathos into the gash where child
Keeps his eye. Wise child. Tenderness is not
For such, not for lions. We stare across

The music, meeting you there, planets
Of laundry and an iron tree, green for Christmas.
I have invented a simple balcony for Christ

Behind the piano. Even in daylight,
There stands a ghost against the rail. Her toque
Is thrown into the traffic noise. A few notes,
Yellow as tender to the sun, hang there.

 

RAPTURE

Time might be anything, even the least
Portion of shadow in the blaze, that helpless
Hare of darkness in the hawk’s world.
I’d forgotten, in the haste of me, to reach
Backwards into time one hand. Come along.
I’ve seen a rainbow where no rain was.
The colors were slain children of the wind
Alive again because time might be anything,
And earth a broken astrolabe
Plunged into blackness by force of sunlight
These latter days. There is a flower
In the hawk’s mouth once was an animal.
It hurries towards the sun, and the hawk,
Helpless in the color of it, becomes rain.