*
It has nothing to do with the banjo –this chair
aches for wheels that will rust, wobble
the way riverbeds grow into something else
–where there was a mouth, there’s now wet dirt
and with a single gulp the Earth is drained
by a compass that points to where it’s from
and you are eased room to room
as an endless sob drying in your throat
–you sing along till side by side
each wheel becomes that afternoon
that folded one hand over the other
as if for the last time.
*
As if these gravestones were once a forest
between each there’s still the breeze
from wood and leaves and winter
though under your fingertips the initials
warm, are already stretching out
the way a beginner tree wants to be lit
then at its highest even in the cold
grows a small stone that will ripen
and stay red for the arrow
carved around two rivers and the heart
brought closer, smelling from the caress
that is not a blouse or its ashes.
*
Though the bed died during the night
this sheet is reaching for flowers
still warm from the last time they saw daylight
as one more hole in the Earth
–it’s for them you heat the room
with wood each morning heavier
breathing in the way you fill your arms
with sores no longer holding on
–this bed was left to die in the open
as the space between two pillows
that grieves with the ancient scent
cooling your lips among the ashes.
*
A spotless avalanche, minutes old
already bathed the way this rope
begins as rain then ponds
then oceans slowly covered with masts
from hard tall ships –you dead
still cling to the rocks and what’s left
when mourners leave too close to each other
–you stretch out though your arms
are now the endless undergrowth
half tied to shadows, half your slow descent
as if the sky was never enough, comes by
weaker and weaker till your breath
becomes weightless –say it! what you hear
is one stone telling the others who it loves
what it began so late in the afternoon.
*
What was siphoned off the sun
could just as easily be this tree
and each branch carried out
struggling with moss and faraway
–who can tell it’s not this tree’s
last chance to sort the light
as if going somewhere was still possible
that love too is possible –all this wood
even in winter arriving to gather you up
as leaves, shining, smelling from dew
already beginning to blossom, impatient
for arms and shoulders and the fire.