Meditations In the Window of the Pale Solarium

1.

In the dream 
pouting shades
were ferried 
to their end

on blue boats decked
with languid dahlias

staring
through darkness  
toward the sunlit edge

having fallen 
from the forms
they inhabited . . .


2.


The white book on the sill
could be a history 
of tenderness, 
and the promises we make
when we are too full of love

a description of Tristan’s
honeyed gaze, 
the sighs of Heloise,
Ophelia’s tears

their pale breaths rising 
against a range of beige hills, 

in the blue tunnel to the sun

above Budapest’s white shades .


**

Out the window
there was a mountain

of blue leaves

the depth of a landscape
is the depth of desire

he was
a death’s head
propped
against an interminable choir

untouched by absence
as by sorrow

eighth notes pouring blue
from her mouth and its parables

**

Inside her pain
was a tiny fountain

angels pared down
to a glossy blue

 . . .water
poured

from nothing
and then returned.

But hers was a beauty that could
not be moved.

A stillness, an emulsion
with a face of solace

in parentheses.


**

The world
is

a semblance

where we float
in the air

little gusts
of distraction

that dine in rouge

Where the days are numerous

and beauty unmoored
the horses, Cadillacs

and chandeliers,
suspended

from a ceiling
of unintended blue

**
Death is to thought
as winter to water

as a blue piano
to the sighs

that make an atmosphere

If there is a case for joy
it cannot be structured

it is 
a habitat

an aviary

a land of csokalade
and sunlit birds


**

The breath
of memory

must always
unshape 
itself

to finally ask
for nothing at all 

or that
which animates

a sky
of animals

too slow
too pale

to do anything
but crawl

across the ecliptic
where the sun 

beats down
every mote of desire

that can 
be beaten down.

 
 

 

— David Hickman