Monday, August 20, 2012


at a remove, inglorious

I live in the construct of your proclamations,
in the watery shadows you fail to sharpen.
You remain undefined even in the keenest light,
ephemeral, forgettable, though I cannot forget
the crooked tale that bore you. Your voice, a hinge
song, rust on rust, a lark’s own hymn, fills the rafters
like moonbeams. What a meager thing to clutch,
a slight breath between  verses, an absence.

I am a snowflake atop the hoary permafrost,
sharp angles of ice rendered in pen, discarded
by sky and crushed by intention. I fall from mercy,
a silver blossom, weightless in an arc of mutiny.
I live in the hem of your coat, a broken thread,
knotted in the hope of pearls and lanterns.
Oh, what am I, but an ache in your jaw, a tooth
in angry decline?  Somewhere I am none of these.

There I am a copper wind, curled like smoke,
an impossible light that follows the wrens
into the twilight’s grace. You gaze the other way.