The cat
followed me
in the door
last muggy night.

on a return trip
from a beer run,
Kurt heard a yowl
as screaming as any hurt guitar,
and looked under his volvo
into the far dark.

Two canary eyes
leered.

Then,
slinking,
the canary eyes
moved.

And this cat
rubbed its body,
the length of its shivering spine
along my
small shins.

And that cat
followed me
in.

tonight
you

are echoed in
the rhythm of
my solitary footsteps,

mirrored in the hazy glow
of street side lamps in
apathetic windows;

and I wonder if
you’ll ever know that
I see your reflection
in each puddle
of April rain

smothering
these lonely
cobblestone
streets.

an element of light slips though the cracks
in this worn, beaten mast
with its aching floorboards & my
creaking starboard heart.
& the wind whips through the sails
just as my aching soul ails
for the same vicissitude--
though it is caught in this sea of stagnancy.
--
this ship:
it asks for weather,
it pleads for the storm,
if only in attempt to be washed ashore.
[something new, something unexplored.]
lo, but it is caught in this mesmerizing estuary,
entangled in the tides of your sea,
& in all the efforts I make to escape from your deep,
I always feel as though I’m swimming upstream.

I feel you slip away
slowly--
like a breath of smoke
from my lungs--
at once foreign and
part of me.

You drift away
from my lips--
parting,
as if to say,
Goodbye?

Sultry smoke dissolves,
Tearing scars into
my lungs,
As you-- you
also burn inside
my chest(my heart)

and I watch,
with stinging eyes,
all the smoke
fades west,
into the wind.

i watched the leavesfall today—

and the windwhip through the crunching grasses…

you were there, too:

in the warmth i felt in my sweatersleeves

& in the way i feel lucky when my bootheelsclickthrice.

yes, you were there,

& i felt the warm breath of your sorrowful farewell

in the changing of the season.

Do not stand at my grave and weep..
I am not there. I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow,
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain,
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awake in the morning's hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft star-shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry..
I am not there. I did not die.

a place on my spine still hums
from when you touched it last.
for it was the first time you revealed
that you wanted more than what we had--
as if you were standing at the ocean's edge,
dipping your fingers beneath the waves
to determine if it was warm enough to jump in.
so cautious,
yet hungering to be consumed
in the possibility of deluge.
come closer, you urged:
your fingers pressed in the shoal of my back,
and the tide pulled you in.