They can come
when the sky is the color of an oil spill
and you are sure you are doing everything wrong.
Green canyons grow dark
and bright. The white clouds
do not stop moving.
Over the field of Queen Anne's lace
a sharp moon
you always forget.
At dusk someone gives you a bicycle
and tells you the war never ends.
There is no other point. You sing loudly
all the way home.
If we climbed
despite the burning
all the way
over the mountain
what would we know?
The oracle cannot tell me
what is necessary
or what is safe.
The blue is found
by walking. My hands
have been inside. They know
the texture of your surrender
and its retreat.
I wonder what would happen
if we finished what we love.
How luminous
the space between
I can only seem to grieve for you in my dreams
when things happen that should not happen –
my father appears with a woman groomed and coached
to look exactly like you, back when you could walk,
and tells me to call her Kim, which was your name,
even though she is young, blonde, and obedient
which you were not.
I start screaming like a child in a war zone
to make sure everyone knows
The old winter light like the desert.
The memory of war in green places. The dryness
in our mouths, the paralysis in our limbs, the way it feels
to let your skull be heavy against the floor, the rising
and falling, the walk we should be taking
to end the word should, the way it all wells up
between our ears; the songs, the grief, the attempts
It is a summer day
and you are too much alive.
The breeze removes your skin
the chain link fence breathes light
and time stops. It could all come crashing down again
the way daylight savings time starts over
and afternoons get black. There are no guarantees
only facts, miracles, and misunderstandings.
In the beginning it seemed clear
the revolution was too urgent to be beautiful.
He gave me a toothbrush before I left.
Small stone red paper
and broken ground for planting.
He crafts small fences and I talk to the beets.
He tells me my eyes have gotten bigger
in the months since the medicine got out of my blood
and I nod, looking through him to the wild light
and all the waking trees, wondering
if I love him for a long time
will my feet know the ground
