My nerves are dry reeds.
They cough his name in the lightest breeze,
they rub together.

Sparks or stars in the hot night,
we crackle like lightning along the riverbed.

The sun casts her jealous eyes down,
she turns the river to cracked clay,
and the wheat dries and dies in the fields.

She will starve us out. No haystacks
lining the paths home, the animals
have all moved on.

Our love is an empty barn,
with dust rising in shafts towards the light.

Trees like fox-fur brushes
red red red
and impossibly soft.
This mountain is sleeping,
Even the bears are swallowed up
Tucked into their rock wombs
Harmless as boulders

But winter is coming and
There is sand in my oyster-heart
Far from the salt spray, shut up tight
Like an old window stuck in its sill.

Man fell in love with the winter
The empty season, he understands.
Pale like blood drained from his face.

But my lungs taste the dust of leaves
Breathe the dim gold light.
I am folding beneath the earth
Red inside and beating with life,
Sleeping but not forever.

You remember that empty winter
Tasted like gin on my breath where it hung,
drops of moisture in the air.
J’ai coupé mes mains sur la glace

Mais mignon, tu es froid,
Et mes bras ne peut pas vous réchauffer.
Nous parlons les mots glacées,
Et ils éclatent dans la nuit brumeuse.

De whisky de vin de gin tonic
Comme les bouteilles, tu seras épuiser.
Alors, qu'est-ce que tu feras?

And those things we say, love
They froth and drip from our mouths
Down our chins and onto the wet snow.

I feel alive in bus stations.
While waiting on a wooden bench,
Chipping at the paint
In the quite anticipation of flight.
The exhaust smell mixes with bacon grease
From the deli next door,
As the buses heave on the pavement.

I choose my seat carefully
Watch the mountains turn blue with distance.
The bus expects nothing from me,
It won’t ask for an explanation.
I can lean my head against the window,
And watch the sun set orange through my eyelids.

Sitting among strangers in a tandem-flight.
We all have stations we’re trying to leave behind.
The  engine knows and will whisper to me,
In steady vibrations,
Rumbling through the vinyl seat.
I will not easily slip away,
On this bus or on any other.

Mohonk Tower is the spindle
Around which I am strung.

The water looks like the scaled back of a fish
Rippling with  its own quiet iridescence.
I place my hands flat on its surface,
Careful not to disturb the delicate tension,
And feel the lake as if it were one being.
A great mass that breathes in waves,
Catches  sunlight and throws it back just as quick.
The water reaches my lower lip
And my toes lose the bottom.

I am endless.

I am immortal and so is the lake, the green-gold depth
Of which I barely break the surface.
In which time exists only as a gentle ebb.
We have been here forever and will still be here
When everything else has died.

A breeze picks up
I clear my eyes and turn away from land.
My heart is a metronome beating in my ear
As I stretch my arms to meet the small lake-waves,
Joining them in their illusion of greatness.

There's a jungle silence tonight.
The angry orange sun is low in the sky
Quivering in the gelatin air, sluggishly setting.
Cars rattle on the pavement like half-mad animals
And I hang limply to the steering wheel, drawing slow breaths,
Listening for a sound of thunder in the reverberating quiet.
There is nothing but the distant whine of sirens,
And the backwards static of the radio.

Only a red crescent of the sun remains,
Pierced on a church steeple and sinking slowly.

The wind chimes on the porch keep time like a metronome.
I’m sitting beside the imitation Tiffany lamp that my mother pretends is real
And wondering if the summer is a canyon I’ve fallen into.
The sky is a queer yellow, the color of a fading bruise,
And steam drifts up from the street. 
It looks like the world has been scorched and is slowly cooling.
The wind chimes are tuned to Amazing Grace,
Keeping time like a metronome to my summer heartbeat - a slow march.
The imitation Tiffany lamp lights up like a jewel,
my mother’s way of telling the world that we are home.