Love Poem for Emma Goldman

All manner of tears
sparkle on my table

            each day  

of my life has been
            a dreadful awakening

beneath the centrifuge

            in my backyard

there's a tree
 
            that refuses to give up
the least of its terrible

fall
luminosity

and

clings
           
            in wrinkled
leaves all winter
           

even the acid rain
can't profane it.

Thirty years ago
            I asked

where, what sad cup of

            the body
            keeps the soul.

Today, they are dragging
           
            my neighbor's immigrant

daughter

away in a Wal Mart uniform
           
            to work at Wal Mart

the gigantic bees

            of headlights corral

in my suburb

            nightly

I am alone at
maximum sheep
density

            dear Sasha, everything

is wrong; everything
caves in my face and
            pockets

the moon

                        creaks

            ungainly on the highway

we have forced it on

Emma

            couldn't answer me

I was hugging that tree

in my backyard 

            again

the light, oh the light
 
through the trees

            is so beautiful

it burns my throat
like helium; it wants to
lift me

            even now

I do not wish for
children to take 
trombone practice

the tree

sways
            its leaves swim

in place, green stars

I stretch

            my body thin, lullaby thin

brown-dirty as dirt

            my neighbors daughter

her braces, she marionettes

like Brittney Spears
            in the Wal Mart uniform;

but I am in love
           
            with her fifty years

hence
when she has
grown fierce
           
            and penitent
as a reborn Emma Goldman.

I am looking for
something to love fiercely

            she calls back from
her future parking

            lot

dredging the hardtop

with hair
            like a weeping willow
 
Where in
the soul is the earth kept?
 
asks the tree
to me

the night swarms

            with 

its reverse light

the spring peepers

rage against the insult
of electrical progress

            one last time

I,  too, have grown into a bad prophet

            I tell them

I have forgotten
            like so many of you.


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