words & pictures
Did the birds tell you
In tremulous warning
We will build another sky in kinder hues
The air as thin and bright as diagrams
Of escaping oscillations
Held against a winding sun
Bury my hand
Time’s mortared skin
In earth as warm as sleep
Whistling hymns to magpies in return
A knife-hard split
At the corner of my mouth
Opens a sharp, metallic sting
Oxalis grows where you died
As if luck were grown a stranger shape
As if this voice of clay and air
Were another wanting prize
Everything is strange Keep calm This is just the end of things Remember the smell of stale bread Toasted until almost burnt This is our body An extemporary sacrament Subluminary in substantiation Transient, but satisfactory As another sip of tea Out the window Above the swamp There is a blue sky fat with buttered scones Around your heels Stagnant water And the drone of dragonfly wings Call life extinct A breath, a residue Your woodsmoke heart Maybe earthquakes make alarms The whistles of trains hauling rumbling cattle cars Warn sharply of collision Here the benches are hard There is gentle laughter As dogs sing Have some jam and cream Sweet, isn’t it?
Falling I eat leaves They have the gritted Pungency of autumn As if humus were the mired death of whales Between the narrows, the soughing shore Rain tastes like, an oscillating erosion Breathe, breathe a breath There is a leviathan Waiting in your throat To hail flukes In a last flung shout Of escape
