STATIC CHARGE
Because these sunsets
mean an end, let’s just look
elsewhere for proof.
Ants crawling beneath the table,
clouds that look like wraiths
one second, a mangled finger
the next. Are we figures or symbols?
There’s nothing in my hand,
just caught between reach
and reached. Meanwhile, the stones
are brooding. They must be
because they are alive, my father
said once, after painting them white
for the night to witness. I must navigate
past all this sadness. It’s crazy how
leaves make so much movement
with just one passing gust.
You feel it, even in the dark.
Words, words, words. And cabins
whose doors shudder in anticipation
as we approach the bend.
* * *
AUBADE
While we try to reel in more of
what shouldn’t be leaking, hold
this rose. It’s the fish seconds after
being taken out of the water,
the iris drying up. Hold this rose,
it arrived when we were not looking,
slipped in a notion of the passing
to the stones. That the brittle begs
to be held anyway and sometimes
the sky turns into a ceiling, hold this
rose. Even the body is full of stems.
When answers are few, flashlights
drawing out only more shadows
and from the dark comes an anguish
that wafts into the room, open the door.
The body is full of stems; hold this rose.