Ghazal
A poem should not mean
But be.
—Archibald MacLeish, “Ars Poetica”
My life an open book, or so it seems
Yet, I can’t even read the words, the seams
Unravel—it sounds like a command
A suave magician makes to silks that seem
Inert one moment, then alive with hope;
Blue infant whose chest expands now seems
Like Lazarus. More than a ghost—a man
Who first must leave this world before he seems
To know life, to see in brittle winter
Grass, the spring, or in the rock shelf, the seam
Of ore, the nugget of gold in mines
That bit by bit becomes the load, the seam
The horse struggles under, up winding paths
The prospector rides asleep; he seems
To dream of barrooms and clean chaps, whiskey,
Smooth skin—it won’t last, but for now it seems
All is possibility, the world not
An oyster but fresh pearls. All things gleam, seem
Priceless, rare: the way you read me like
A book—the words and pages, even seams
Fascinate, and Cynthia’s the moon in
Woman’s form, with each compare more is than seems.
—Cynthia Ris