The silhouette of a jumper
Dirties the sky. A protest
Against the universe, one last
Obscenity hurled at the street.

The jump echoes inside me.
Another Icarus. Can I claim to be so noble
To fail so utterly?

The taste of blood fills my mouth in sympathy.
Oedipus tore at his eyes when he saw his mistakes.
Fate loads the die.

The grass wept for her, the ice whispered--
A miscast Adam threw the fruit like a protester’s stone.

And this flesh of your flesh, a rib overthrown by stars
This Eve stepped forward with a smile, in
Gentleness.

The softest thing,
say,
the sound of

a single
distinct
blink
of a dry eye,

that slightest scratching sensation
of your lens against you lids,
reminds you
you’re
alive.

Heavy perfume of cedar
Overwhelms the nostrils

Needles crush underfoot
Alone without You, Lord
I seek you in birdsong

swelling the heart.

Tangled in waves
Bathed in solitude and breeze
We battle the water

Wind brushes me
Senses awakened and touched
I breathe newborn

Into the void of sky
I sigh

A self unraveled by knowledge
A Faust, memories perched like bird
Squawking and squawking
Lost

Driving down country roads
Remembering, like a repeating tape,
What we have just seen

My life is a black comedy, its airtime rapidly evaporating
the autumn of my childhood’s eden.