SPEARS JONES, Patricia

The Theme is Flight

For a hummingbird in Hawaii

And an empty corridor at Heathrow

For the boy with a kite

There is always a boy with a kite

For the sleight of hand

And the dazzled eyes that follow

For the moon's full light

And lovers' kisses beneath it

For the wounds that will never heal

And the eyes that incessantly cry

For the lies we tell ourselves to stave off

The truths that could destroy us

Stand still at a street's edge, look up

And murmur wings, wings

I should have wings.

Ghosts

He was filled with beauty, so filled he could not stop the shadows

from their walk around his horn, blasting cobwebs in the Fillmore's ceiling.

Somewhere dawn makes up for the night before, but he is floating.

Dead in the water. And yet, my lover tells me, he saw him shimmering.

As did others. It could have been the acid. Or fragmented harmonics.

His reed ancestral. This perilous knowledge. The band went home,

shivering. A girl threw roses in the water. Carnations, daisies. And bright red sashes.

Like ones the Chinese use for funeral banners. A drummer intoned chants

From the Orient. Police wrote up the news. Years later, my lover told me

Friends would hear the whisper, then a tone, full throttle from the wind.

Ghosts on Second Avenue, jazzmen in the falling stars.

If you catch one, your hands will glitter.


What I have not done for Love

I have not torn my hair in a public place

Or worn a dress the size of a dime

Once I spoke in a French accent, but it sounded

Lithuanian

I have not denounced my family

or let the back of my hand slap a cousin's cheek

I have not found the perfect strand of pearls

Or made a gift of sudden beauty

I have yet to consult

the Fortune Telling Chicken

in Chinatown

I admit a fondness Jack Daniels and Cosmopolitans

And the ease with which Arkansas wrecks my

my quick New York speech

On nights when stars brightly pattern the Brooklyn sky

I search for your hand and find a drift of wind.