Ray Freed's Poetry


Ray Freed's poems have appeared in journals and periodicals in the US,
Canada, and Britain. Books and chapbooks include Sea Animal On Land, 1970;
Necessary Lies, 1975; Shinnecock Bay, 1977; Much Cry Little Wool, 1990;
Hualalai, 1995; The Juggler's Ball, 1996; and All Horses Are Flowers, 1998.
He has given numerous public and private readings of his work, and in
Spring 1990 served as Poet-In-Residence at the State University of New
York at Stony Brook. He lives in Kona on the Big Island of Hawaii.

				    Surf
	     			         
  
		In the wide light before dawn 
		your sleeping face pulls toward manhood 
		like untamed horses
		like sleek dolphins leaping among waves,
 
		I want to wake you because the surf pounds
		heavy at Banyan's a hundred yards from here 
		I want to walk barefoot with you and stand
		on the sand under the white moon watching 
		white waves roll in                 
		I want to live forever.

		Someday you'll know how I feel tonight
		watching your smooth sleeping body
		you'll know I want to live forever
		not for fear of dying
		but for the wonder of seeing you grow.

		I'm a young man surprised by age,
		sentimental sac of blood and flesh,
		tool of nature tethered 
		in the strict courtyard of human response,
		and you are the culmination of all our days,
		of the first cities, the pyramids,
		skyscrapers, rockets to the moon.

		You are beyond my wildest dream 
		and most secret ambition, 
		I never hoped
		to make a thing 
		as fine as you.

Limbs When I'd had enough of the answering machine I broke the door down to find your best suit stuffed with straw propped in a chair, shoes polished. They said you'd gone to follow the receding river galloped after it like a freed stallion diminishng in the distance the way railroad tracks do, a trick of perspective. This morning your dog showed up with a note under his collar but I'm unfamiliar with the language of that far country. Your loss is like an amputation, one feels the gone limb alive, sensing the air.

I want to walk up to you and say the night has legs like blue machines humming, I want to roll over you in a barrel and survive, to build you a noodle factory where workers spin to birdsong, I want to live under your skirt where the sky is pure and without television, I want to plant my flag on your moon to wave in your rampant eyes and walk down the boulevard sliding my fingers down over your rump staking my claim, I want to breathe in the air you breathe out, to be animal to yours sweating in the night teeth bared, oblivious, faster than light. Let me introduce myself.

Desperado with black hat keeps his hair warm, wears spectacles, his eyes need help. His wife treats him like a child, he's content with this, it's easy. In their white house in the living room in a white cupboard is a box with a marble from his boyhood in Lima, Ohio. Late at night his wife sleeps, the house is still, he rolls the marble in his hand, his palm.