remains

to have:

in the keep of a sun
both fresh and sodden,
I wander and witness
shivering poplars shake
silver coins in wet light:

my albatross heart
thuds its blood metronome:
onward, onward…
such heavy health…

see, the living have
roads funding
organ and limb
with oxygen
until
they don’t.
nothing stoked,
nothing burned.
listen: this is
how the broken break –

with damp clasped hands
and promises to stay;

with bright flowers dried
in dusty spines,
picked fresh then
pressed to memory;

with lemon ice cream
spooned on metal,
scraping enamel
in defiance of summer;

with poems locked
into origami boats,
hope whispered
over each furrow and fold:
find you, find you, find you…

with tears stolen
to the ocean’s breast
who coos
my darlings! welcome home.
salt will always seek
her sisters…

to hold.

on the forest floor
a deer lies dead.
soft belly skyward,
moss cradling spine,
her ribs sift dirt
as soil licks flesh
from still white points.
see, the dead hold.

when cicadas emerge
from seventeen years slumber,
the world to them is no
grand disappointment –
they purchase pine,
sing on cedar, or beech,
leave exoskeletal legacies
as they
free new wings…

as long as –

grief is an osprey
hoarding home,
whose talons pierce threshold
like a fish;

and ferns unfurling,
fingering sun,
their fiddleheads picked
unceremoniously,
then fried in oil –
poured,
like mercy;

and morning dew,
crushed under
Phoebus’ fiery wheel,
the harbor of darkness
consumed by hydrogen…

as I long for
lightning
to break the horizon,
a sign in this season,
a soft peach moon full
of fog and music,

you both shall live –
it’s august when wild
blueberries domicile,
brine and billow
in cerulean spheres:
a marriage to mountain,
a divorcing of dirge…

as I long for
what was…

all goes on,
as it ever has,
as it ever will…
we still splurge
time…

we live like ospreys;
we die like cicadas…