Orpheus Recusant

In this widowed room I repeat
the lessons of my senescent heart,

bead by bead. I ready myself
for the opening of the bitter book

which counsels your faith
and the colored book attending

with cap and bells the approach
of our impatient story:

Attic blessed, fluted
with Lydian melancholies, the umbria
implicit in your breast

We adorn ourselves with tears and amethyst
as children of the Queen

No eclipse will ever elicit a denial
between us


This hand-pressed netting,
this veil of brides, this storied fabric winding
its whisperings about us, sleeplessly

compelling our mouths together for breath, for
birth:

I now assume Botticelli’s love
for you


And if time were to abandon us in some unmeasured
embrace, I would rest beside you
until we were chosen to be brought forth again
from the cold.



Orpheus Recusant [#49]
© 2000 Fammerée


* * * * *

“Orpheus Recusant” appears in Lessons of Water & Thirst,
a book of poems by Richard Fammerée.

* * * * *

Richard Fammerée
fammeree.com
fammeree@att.net
director@universeofpoetry.org


* * * * *

Photograph by Susan Aurinko

* * * * *

The Absolute of Indigo

This mosaic of mesmerized silver
fish and chartreuse
scum harboring
seed pods
sailed all green things once
to the young peninsulas

of my lungs.

I was held to this stone
hundreds of fish years ago.
My mother warmed me and warned me; but
an emerald billowed up and
I skipped ahead, popping and twinkling
as a skiff's pennant, a tin of spinach
pressed to my biceps, and I begged my mom

not to be afraid.

All things are arranged now in my vessel.
I hear her. She whispers, Do not worry, as she passes,
bludgeoned
with twilight, into the absolute
of indigo.



The Absolute of Indigo [#48]
© 2000 Fammerée


* * * * *

“The Absolute of Indigo” appears in Lessons of Water & Thirst,
a book of poems by Richard Fammerée.

* * * * *

Richard Fammerée
fammeree.com
fammeree@att.net
director@universeofpoetry.org


* * * * *