The white flowers
will not arrive
by stallion, nor
by lightning.

The stolid courier
will knock, a door
swinging; a suitable
place prepared.

In the cold district,
the exploded heads
of trees look back at me:
why didn't I save them?

Even the sun seems lopped.
But in the face of it
I will stand, have coffee,
& be reminded of you.

It's 6:30, and the sky
turns a spoiled milk shade
before tripping
in its hurry to arrive.

Embers stinging the clouds,
soot settling on a line -

black flake rain
is stirring.

Here is a new sleep,
where I find myself.

Laying in the cascade,
the phone's young flood

assembles your hair -
I'm reminded of my flight

across the salt,
to the place where you are.

This city's graved flecks
are forgotten; I've left them

for a green kingdom
in another pattern.

Blue dregs are hanging
each to each on the line,  

& ash tendons pull
as cirrus takes the stair.

Overflowing night is emptied
in the twine of our sleep,

& we wake, suspended
in our own eye.

There is a silver splash
perched in the bathroom

where the hand finds itself
encased in breath,

a throwaway gesture that drifts
over to the new corner,

& finds shape as your face,
shielded in cloud.

I am staring out
at the black shoulder
that fell an hour ago
across the yard lap,
thinking about it again:
that love is a game
with no way to win;
but you can lose more slowly.

I watch the small birds
chop across caroled glen,
bunch split on branch,
push through bitter yard.

In this way I have missed you,
stirring myself thing to thing
in the same small spaces -
finding only thinness to rest on.

Honeycombs of light
****** themselves into being
in metro fields.
Children cross the lush
to skip stones at the dead fence
as night assembles itself
into spaces and stars.

Day falls away like a skin,
beneath conquering belts of milk
that separate from a lidless emptiness.
Silver subway trains gleam
in their charcoal tunnels.
Apart from all of it
is a chalk morsel moon.

Sometimes you are
the thrown stone
sinking down to post
& sometimes you are
the star wheeling off tether.