I: My Poet's Face

I don't want to see my poet's face.
If you must show a photograph
douse the light, let sunshine
filter shadows through the place
so his skin can shimmer like secrets.

Poems are bones of breath fleshed out with memory.
They stalk the half-lit halls of a dusky nowhere,
long-limbed children exhilarated by laughter
even as their poet moans.
If you must show pictures, show his children,
bright skittering creatures
sucking the milk of life with no hereafter.

Don't show my poet's face.
It has no place in my imaginings.
Tell me his birth, his pains,
and his achievements.
Give him historical muscles like a tale.
Let him whisper ghostly his bereavements.
No matter what monsters his heart
gnaw against his  

he shall not fail.

He shall not fail,
but only if you listen.
Wife, you are the shade and light,
the shimmer of sun at dawn,
of moon at night upon his skin.
Love him,
and in your ear
his dark words glisten.
Listen.