Atlantis- A Lost Sonnet

How on earth did it happen, I used to wonder
that a whole city—arches, pillars, colonnades,
not to mention vehicles and animals—had all
one fine day gone under?

I mean, I said to myself, the world was small then.
Surely a great city must have been missed?
I miss our old city —

white pepper, white pudding, you and I meeting
under fanlights and low skies to go home in it. Maybe
what really happened is

this: the old fable-makers searched hard for a word
to convey that what is gone is gone forever and
never found it. And so, in the best traditions of

where we come from, they gave their sorrow a name
and drowned it.

Evening

the sky is mine, I claim it.

The odd dartings of bats, even, are mine; I like them less than the birds

and much less than fireflies.

the single insect suspended in lucid air

between two fronds of warm palm

is also mine.

I want all the pieces of this.

The moon sits on a spiral staircase tonight

and you talk of a trip from years ago.

and yes, I want that long-ago time-

if I walk back into all those years,

I hope

the moon would be the same.

Winter

It has been nineteen days of waiting
a film of oil coats my thoughts
in slippery rainbows.
Come back to me,
I want the bubbles to burst.

stories

You see, I want this poem to be nicer
than life. I want you to look at it
when anxiety zigzags your stomach
and the last tranquilizer is gone
and you need someone to tell you
I’ll be here when you want me
like the sound inside a shell.

It's time

I like the way
I have taken on some of your habits.
I have taken to showering
in the dark.
At the precise hour
when the twilight
flows like a purple scarf,
I step into the water-
the soap is a translucent mint-scented fish in my slippery hands
and the moon is so faint
I want to bite it out of the sky.
I owe this to you.