I have clean earth in my hands You shake, a sea of trees Humpty-dumpty falling I am drunk on nectarines Face half bellyache green The obverse The deep maroon Of summer’s lost eclipse Clouds thin as desperation Where we once bent like ships Buoyant but Never quite losing A carefully layered union There is almost nothing Left up here but sky And your warm-honeyed faced Swollen-cheeked Jack-knife crooked Strung on the limb Turn aside Far away Water breaks, rejoins Curves like swans, dissolving The heat is a churl The unctuousness Of sickly pine Arm in arm we go inside Laugh-collapse On the ricochet linoleum
