BOUQUET / BREATH

Slowly growing depth is the holding
There will never be anywhere else
And we’re trying to get back there?
Inhabit it again with the wonder reborn

Coyotes hiding in the tall brown grass
The smell of wild fennel behind the Dollar General

But when you're around me water is more like fire
The dried flowers on the dash childhood bloom

And I'll make a bouquet in the graveyard with you
Again and again and again
Mottles, rosettes, channels, puddles and rime

Glaring red eyes in the forest
Halibut, beets and greens
Bagpipe timbre

Her harmonied jangle tones
The family of deer in the river

The graveyard
(A bouquet) with you

ORANGES

I hold the present like pyrite
Flashing symbol lake tide washing specks
But our moments have different densities don’t they
Nick Drake’s mom singing “I remember oranges You remember dust”
But don’t know how do I let you go I don’t want you to walk away
What about the inertia of my disappointment
My failure sacred my alcohol my walnuts
Perhaps I need long sleep where I die to light
Forget to bring my loss or my acid
And turn the innards out and wisp away electrons that gut into a laugh
But need is to be hungry so I can accept the food you serve
I think it’s love blown scatter ash of a corpse
Like gnat glow at the end of summer
And people freak out when it shines orange
As if the apocalypse isn't a constant
The blabbing stacks of flesh & capital with total lack of empathy
And their kids swimming in the river lecture me
How the city is a lot of trash and homeless and they’re sad
Cause their parents are selling their houses and they cosplay claiming poverty
Have you ever seen your mother’s entire smile pulled out of her mouth?
Her hands split and stitched jagged? Have you seen the whore portraits
On your dad’s point and shoot? The cysts?
I’m surrounded by thankful business people making breakfasts
Willing to share the eggs cause I'm some kinda
Cloud or dark birdsong on the treeline
Of their prim lives funding imprisonment in glee
And I limp to write you a pressed flower kit or dog prayer
So maybe we could learn to spell earth as heart
But one by one we’ll go trying to save one another
And not one of us will know how to swim

PLEASE TELL ME

Your smile
The way wax melts
Or how the cold water glass
Calls clear beaded jewels
To refract our kitchen window

I’d like to be as honest and as good as that

The hawk bathing in the storm puddle
The ladybug husk caught in the cobweb
The noon sun cicadas the moon pollen
The conscious swaying kelp and conches
The sudden frog burst in spring

And when we’re just sitting there, watching swans
and shorebirds and the estuary stench wafts over
and there’s traffic on the bridge and it's hard to
Fathom the distance between us and California
And all the simultaneous lives lived and the quick-
withering extinction whittling down our familial bones

I’ll offer you a rosary of smoke

And ask if there’s really any path to follow
or just the crackling happenings
of this huge this out of control Fire

I’ll say please

Please tell me please
Please tell me what you need to speak
Please tell me what you need

To speak and dream this group of dark beads into your heart

BEWICK’S WREN

Beckon morning
We’re bloomed and wilted
An envelope of fennel
Or a musty casino
Either way
One mirrored fragment

Little thicket singer
Awaken and
Whistle orchards
Through my humdrum reeds
Spilling fragrance
Wind friction and goose clangor
Creaky wings
Ugly jolts
Rumors of thunder

I am living in questions
I am not the light

What if the entire cloud falls at once?
A sky crush oceaning us against the earth!
All this impulse finally spurting out
These grungy feathers preened

Our love fluxed through gesture
Gathering seed reaching out for rain drops
Sifting sorting turning over small trinkets

Ephemeral scrap
Walnut shell
Sober token
Kaleidoscope