Sipping communion wine—
oh why, poor devil, did you ever dare drink—
everything will be fine,
I think.

Source of the albatross:
slipshod Leviticus, cavalier reject—
my mom dog-eared the verse,
I checked.

I kiss him on the mouth,
and enter the hush of an unwelcoming house—
I guess the silence stings,
a bit.

Morphine to drift free,
and the dim light of purpose
could cut through the darkness
while I wait to resurface;

I see a swan on the water,
she bathes in the Loch Ness,
a summoned companion,
or someone to grow old with.

The feeling of fire
corrupts me completely—
to wit, I retire
from meaningless dreaming

and send out a message
as coded, heavy breathing
to signal the nurses
to let flow the morphine.

There was a stretch of land down 49
that cut the Hori-
con in half,

I drove that road with windows rolled
down, breathing in the
earthen scents;

(and while I’d never
spotted her,
I was told the Great Blue Heron lived there)

the crickets
tuned their instruments
and played out a moonlit sonata,

while a symphony of scarlet lights
blinked in sync
like fireflies

that bathed the Marsh in
fleeting crimson, a pulsating
vermillion.

The windmills weren’t there before,
they all went up
some years ago,

and though the terraform’s not
terrible
(I suppose it’s better for the Earth)

the flashing scared
the birds away, and
I miss the calm of Yesterday.

we heard
there’s a rumor of war,
and there’s nowhere to
run;

we killed
those Connecticut kids
to make room for
our guns;

we shrugged
when we noticed the graves
overflow with our
young;

we can
get used to anything—
like a school slick with
blood—

we will
destruct according to
the Devil’s bargain we’ve
struck.

The stars recede into the satin
of the midnight sky, phantasm
fireflies will flicker
to replace the lights that left us;

the settled logic of a thought
that lingers somewhere in between
the ephemera of dreams,
and the transience of love:

if stars are dust, and I am, too,
then I am light, and so are you,
or else we’re fuel to feed the stars
when we collapse back into dust—

everything is temporary—
the chrysanthemum and cardinal,
the earth will saturate with spirits—
and it won’t hurt but for a second;

right before we’re long forgotten,
as the tidal wave surrounds us,
we will speak with cold precision,
Hemingway's brevity and feeling:

“Nothing ever had a meaning,
but for what we chose to give it.”
And all this time, I had been thinking
that I’d find it, if I’d been looking.