“When you’re five, endings are sweet.
The familiar turning of a car on your street
in your sleep, and the sighing of brakes
before the door opens to wake you
with the cool taste of night.
The sound of rustling paper—
last page falling on the story your mother
read you, when you’re already tucked in bed:
“The End,” in all-caps whisper—
“Sleep well,” ‘Good night.'”
You wonder
if I’ve built
you a pedestal.
Actually,
it’s more of
a crucible—
we have all
the gold coins
at our disposal,
but I don’t want
you to be Midas
all the time…
There’s too much of him.
His sundogs chase me across the sky
and scatter the seagulls.
I wield him like crystal
in the ark of my hands.
He comes right through me
like a light at the end of my tunnel
opening the ways,
spilling the rays
all over my broken sidewalk…
I accumulate you in layers.
Your mica patina
glints on my rocks,
a silver comet sparkle
on ragged window sheets—
pages of a novel
the earth once wrote
to the sun…
We fit like zig-zags,
serrated teeth
biting in opposite directions.
We gnashed our hungry ghosts
and lashed electric DNA
on time’s angry barbed-wire fence,
calling all the cockatoos
to our sleeping tree.
The child is the one who stayed,
bending the branches low
and, with her pink disarming chirping,
demanded the moon obey…
I’m an envelope carried for too long,
protecting my contents; my skin is paper
sheathing over fire that’s learned the art
of not combusting.
I’m doing the dishes today.
Washing and shelving plates.
Answering my child’s questions.
Driving through a forest in the dark,
the moon in Scorpio and moonlight
twisting my cold feet in their boots…
There’s a place beyond the runway lights
where clouds learn to talk to each other.
The air traffic signals
bounce off the silver linings,
radiating light spokes into the ether
and the wheels turning
sound like the music
of departure from the body;
the bullroar hum
indicating something otherworldly
and not quite comfortable
to the habits of feet…
…I was still new, and you were much newer
and sometimes I think about that, this whole time thing—
all the clocks with their arms and alarm bells
making awkward ticks and tocks toward winter:
you had such little hands then, hands I would have
held in mine and walked to the swings with,
and everything would have been different
but you caught me at the end of apple season
while I still have leaf-piles to jump in
so get it now while you can—…
salt and sugar
sugar and salt
the captain’s asleep
and the fevered crew
sleeps below deck
sugar and sugar
salt and salt
I am swimming too far
from the shore today
but somehow you’ve found me,
cradling me
with infinite starfish arms
in a yellow room
beneath this blue infinity
where even islands hide…
for L.T. Rest in adventure, friend… you are cherished and remembered forever.
if you read between the lines
that striate my iris,
you’ll find a hidden reservoir of blue
with a name written on the other side
in invisible ink—
a poem written so long ago
and with such a young and heavy hand
that pen trespassed paper and broke into sky,
until I cried because no page could contain
the words that could describe him—
I thought I could just let you go,
but now I know
how the wind itself remembers
this silver thread
connecting you
to me
eternally—
you never needed shelter
and I never detained you
in your flight to the stars,
yet here you are—
following me like the tethered moon
across the pale blue morning…
This voice
calls my soul at night
out of its deep pockets
like the bullroar of frogs
in a downpour,
emerging out of nowhere
from the shadows
behind the growl of thunder,
closing down all my roads.
I think we’re stuck here.
Hunker down, lover.
We’re going nowhere tonight…
