POETRY BY STEVE EMMA

"DUST TO WATER"


 
Self-Published 1995 
A Limited Selection from a Book of 34 Poems

Time falls in colors,
    a broom sweeping seasons.
Life tumbles,
    haphazardly bolted to our flesh.
Loves like weeds
    climax in denouement.
Nightshades, pinks, nettles, spurges...
    are ripe with seed.
Everything is final.
Everything is overcome.

 

 

 

 

Off from the corner of my eye, out of reach
                    you sit
the empty cup of tea keeps empty company
                    to your thoughts.
My thoughts too keep empty company
                    but I do not interfere.
Only the quiet reaches me now
In the protracted mingling of imagination and sight.

 

 

 

 

We are two pieces of paper you and I
two pages stuck together
the words crushed thin.
If they pull us apart
we tear
and become incomprehensible

 

 

I wash my hands of vows
of courtesy which makes suspect
anything that grabs by silent sleight of hand
this scribbling sound of pencil on paper.
I am no more able to think to love
than I am able to think to write.
I wash my fingers in Pilate's washbasin
but I cannot not witness.

 

 

 

noises.
peepers, crickets
the sightless scurryings

the infinity of stars
the darkness
thick behind the stars
the sharp silhouettes of leaves
out of reach
I have been wounded badly.

 

 

 

As though alone
in the quietude of silent stone
in this hardness of earth
on these soft soles of feet
You and I resplendent
in the colossus of life
comfortable as that ripe apple
envious in any Eden

 

 

Blessed are pure white feminine shoulders
Walked down upon by my hands
Beneath, the little hills point east and west
Rise and fall with each breath
How could I ever anger you
So lovely now in your ecstasy?

 

 

Dust to water, water to dust
Elevated in the wisping clouds
If I am unfortunate in all this
If I am unfortunate in savoring
The aftertaste of last nights
Of the yellowish now green
Changing shades of light
Through the five needle pine
Hush, Dust to water, water to dust.

First Book

©Steve Emma 2002

Sculpture