february 1

in the unmarked grave. beyond the poison prison fields and fallen
beneath a leaden hand, loveless as loveless death
due a toiling land, white bone and blue
windy war bonnets those
yellow jackets w errant knives

of slender scented
tenderness and rosen
torrents dawned
in red arterial
noons

lays moon gilded tides, lapping legerdemain
of meadow and mangrove in the lemonbalm star trove.
lays lore and ardor, insane amplitudes of time
theatric in their splendor and burdened complete.

like beasts like death hilarious. like thieves
of unseen, unremembered names.

lay compass arrows swift as finches or crows
sublimely circling, clothed in mourning at a feast.

isn’t eden brief...
and when they're done,
vulture belly's gorged and smoldering suns,

tell them they've come late. that what I found I've
married the ground I'd lain my cheek in the emptied night.

tell them the same way that you would speak
green daisies into the teeth of the moonlight wreath.
pen anemones, plucked daffodils, dahlias, daturas
into the maw of the sunset law, sinking amphoras.

the same way maybe that you wished to bleach
the words themselves like stains from the breath of them.
carefully those, from the long time that you spoke
into my chest that you spoke there in the rain.

same as the long time that we could ever think
again to pardon winter with spring, or when
autumn parted promise summer, one after another
carefully into the trees as they went to sleep.