Her words are not for me not about me Her words are not for me not about me Repeat
am i allowed To float Her words aloud To sink them in my mind To lap them from the page
i accidentally swallow, then gulp down Her Salt words/ like when the surf breaks and surprises an exhilarated, Great Lakes girl with a mouthful of seawater during her first swim in the Ocean
Her words were not meant for me Her words were not meant for me Repeat
it’s mid evening east of The Lake and the night is dawning like a second morning
the Full Moon’s light in a clearer sky gleams through the generous panes of this blessed, old green house
Moon’s rise / Her Light
February’s Snow Moon is glowing in a familiar dance with her beloved Earth/ Sun, their invisible chaperone, is voyeur to their touchless, perfect tango
a family of four deer mother and children, i think/ are gleaners here tonight while i consume their Moon play
silent and sitting in the dark, i admire: coat, tallow, hooves and hot, flow of blood is all that’s between them and this howling wind and frozen ground
let me mimic their resilience, integrity i’ve been so weak, so broken this winter a fractioned shadow, i am disintegrating, disappearing / my light given or grifted away
“This used to be my playground” and our proxy for church on spring, summer and fall sabbaths
These were the halcyon days.
Load up the International Harvester TravelAll with wooden doors and quarter panels – it has two gas tanks, you know Bought it used, but pristine on payments – from the showroom on Logan Boulevard and Elston Avenue with zero credit history and all the usury
Have mercy.
Follow me, and I will make you fishers of fish
He will bait your hook on the bamboo pole he bought you Later, you will insist on the “Pocket Fisherman” – as seen on TV
i add my most intentional breaths to the land, to the atmosphere, for the birch saplings, for a man i knew, bent over frozen in a forced deference mimicking reverence won’t, can’t hold [it never does]
in my winter cocoon enveloped in sheets and blankets my eyes closed all day
these damned windows, seams of daylight break through fiber, try and force their way through slits and lashes, i resist pink lids, i won’t study and map your capillary streams / birds, please don’t sing / i refuse to perceive anything but my own inlands
i don’t feed i don’t drink i don’t think i don’t move i don’t feel
i only let
let let let
i am not dying though i am working from the inside autonomic, appearing halcyon while transforming all memoir of you – from idealization into unbiased slurry, and, into something, new into something, else of me
a phantom history – a life, no mere limb one i didn’t know i had, to begin with, let alone, lost /out on/ a door to a paralleling universe and no wormhole key
the velveteen poet 