Do you remember the sky sinking?
That fall, when we climbed up our vague tree
and watched the nights burn
     softly on
Those naked arms,
                 and our pricking skins
You told me that
the dark seemed quite obese
I wondered how it could be

remember the dawns
  that lingered before us
and birds with jewels between their beaks
    Sun like a bruise clawed its way out
We never did see— never unseeing
ever on watch, yet the clouds
    grew above
and we only drew forests with our hands

yours upon mine upon
  yours upon—
and down, down plunged it all
First, gold
          then the glass
We jumped in weeping puddles
and forced the mud into birthing birds
Then came
     the silvers
and with them, those malnourished winds
Do you remember

the smoke that descended down the cliffs?
That winter, we melted
            with our pink flames
and slept away those snarling wolves
Beneath forts built of woollen quilts
        our limbs tangled, tangled
     with our tales
You told me the dark
     seemed quite obese
I nodded like
  a broken, puppet horse

then—
Dust gushed out the vessels of air
   and cars coughed
And down, down
                came it all
Dawns befriended our solitary dusks
and moons sped up their dance
I ran my fingers down
     the green of your strands
You introduced a ladybug to my skin

down, down tumbled nothing
       First the browns
then the blues
We buried our barren feet in sticky sands
and you told me
It hurt
where, I asked
here.
and there were you kissed

And blues fell upon blues
’til cold, shivering, stumbled away
And our tree was a painting
    on the lips of a stream
Restless, it lurked out our reach
and the sky
swelled and swelled
till a heavy haze came plummeting hither
And above us was left nothing but—

It hurts, you said
I asked you where
here
     here
  here—
the blues embraced the lonely of our land
and kissed it all over
  all over
Huts, playgrounds, markets—
Wells, trenches, hills and hills
children, the rest
     and voiceless shrubs
All devoured.

Do you remember the bleak stars
as they struggled to flutter
    in the smothering vacancy
Then the summer smiled
and stole our dying skies, and
  all the quiet broke loose
        in our bleached towns
We in a moor sprayed with stillness
    treaded through
the misty of our eyes
        feet upon cinders jagged
where does it hurt, I asked
  nowhere
nowhere, nowhere—

The earth moves
according to its natural principles -
I love you according to mine.

Youth has left us so quickly -
the sun was once
a sweet saffron bolus
we swallowed so eagerly
fat day after day.

Now it's a quiet yellow *****,
that chokes on its own easting and
goes down like a horse pill in the west.

Instead, we are with moon -
I pull you close sometimes in tide,
then you're away waning, waning -
doldrums, tantrums.

If only I could swing low over you,
in your green rain town,
& not be pushed away.

It's no longer easy
to share the days with you.
I fill with ulcers
that bleed all into me,
the body the echo of the mind.

But I love you on natural principles -
you have touched my life all over.
Where I go, I bring you;
you are still the voyage home,
even when your replies come
so terse and lacking invitation.

the slow salt of her tongue licks deep the sandstone
that broke and bound her to shore