He has legs that are taking him places
                                                          watch him go.
When you run things wobble and go
slow so you
                   barely go anywhere at all.
                   In a neighborhood unfamiliar
in a drought:
                  if you rolled on that grass it’d be
the same as a camel ride,
               Where ya headed? They say as he
       runs by already long gone
                                   and where ya headed?
       They say not standing outside the lawn
       not watering their grass
                                           dead
      with hose not empty.
                                       You say
I’m far from home,
                               this place is different.

Under the evergreens I take your hand.
Clutching you I discover a similarity.
Your nails are brittle and stained edges of the pinecones.
Beneath the fingertips crammed dirt and sand.
Who knows what else lies under there, I don’t want to.
Rubbing you the wrong way, the nails drag and snap.
The opposite direction feels silky, wooden.
One cone detaches from a limb, falls in our lap.

Hands smelling of old forest’s deaden life.
Smelling of all school chapel outside.
Wonder if Dieu meant for us to smell that way.
Wouldn’t he have put it in the good book?
Dirt and what else flies through us in each new breath.
I feel the evergreen within me calling out.
What is He saying to you with that aroma?
Perfume ourselves in eau de pomme de pin.

Woven together our palms become a pine cone.
Notice tessellations of body parts and cones.
Where I stop, you begin, overlapping, lapping.
Blossoming and wrapping till we reach a point.
Forever is hardly a romantic concept.
However, the trees manage to keep green each winter.
Falling all around us, hitting the brown needles, cones.

Mine is a river of smooth sienna and yours is unshorn ivory. I’d love to
swim easy on your skin for a while, to feel it on a molecular
level. If I could travel your body, microsize myself and
embark upon a pilgrimage over your organs and
soul, I’d lay in my canoe cruising down
arteries listening to the music
of your systems. I would
bring plenty of books
to read and water
without
ice.