your tragic etymology
floats in low orbit
around a grey shadowed
head itself only loosely
tethered like the dove
seen now in the stock
photo on your obituary
page that threatens
to turn fully dimensioned
and fly away (but cannot
that would be too easy
for me)
two lovers diverge in a yellow wood
and I get down to the business
of hunting mushrooms and kismet
all underneath the rusted out hood
of an abandoned Cadillac’s bent grimace
then strip off all my fraying clothes
and toss them creasing over tree branches
bend down and crawl among the rooted trenches
spiking holes for new planting in the wake of toes
while squeezing dirt until each finger blanches
my love will call for me but I am too far gone
to hear an idling engine buzz like bees–
that could be voice cascading through the trees
yet if that were her it’s sure that I’d have known
it was not just the crickets’ theremin on the breeze
my love will search for me and find just rags
like the Caddy cast aside I am out of place but home
inside a cave where I will turn to bones
this is my face imprinted on the crags
I am not lost although I am alone
The moment slips out of clasping
hands like it’s coated with soap suds
the moment when his silver soul
flees his bony cage and skips
town across the red sea and out
to make a permanent home
burrowed in the pocked and pitted
lunar expanse of my belly
along with the others
like jellyfish washing up
on the same seashelled
shore where they will live forever
as far as my infant mind
can tell and it is no great feat
to imagine a world of sand
so stingered that none dare
cross and frolic in the ocean.
mission_to_mercury 