Poem for Joanna

how can i tell of my silence      with words?

(a radio telescope

a gaunt contraption of sheds

& very many grids of cable  

     imagine a telescope dish

the diameter of the earth

imagine probing the furthest areas of the universe)

energy

as in quasars        suns         within molecules

& my sun !

my ENERGY

bursts

a crescendo

       is a quasar

a thing of legend

but quietly goes the air

my breath

my strokes of hand

mushrooms in dank places

lightened by dawn

Joanna has never heard the sonic hiss

there is a smell of breakfast

a stream leaping down stones

which among the grasses

is the ancient one...?

keeper of grass legend

or among water

which drop?

Joanna

      your legs are beautifully long

      but you are too big for Rodin...

come at me...

i say you are too big

but Rodin is dead anyhow

perhaps of lesser legged women

(i talk thus when i am tired

     or i am enigmatic...

        later I will try to find heron imagery

my verse will walk on stilts

my arm on white stains black

i write my blackness with light

were i no poet

an astronomer i'd be

& I would hunt

the quark

Dick Russell

                                        First published in Wolfprints, 1971