Summer night, heavy with humming:
static hisses from tree hollows,
crickets tick in the garden.
A still life:
bone crunch, tree crack, macaw

Static hisses from tree hollows,
black sap clots the soil.
bone crunch, tree crack, macaw.
Bullfrogs bellow, the scuttle of thunder.

Black sap boils then clots
the rim of a fire, aroma of rosemary.
Thunder shatters the shutters.
A still life:
pea snap, wind murmur, husks

The fire smolders, damp halo of ash.
Hoot owls call to the moon,
ask their question.

bone crunch, tree crack, macaw.
pea snap, wind murmur, dawn.

                                                                                 -km

The sun stuck--
hung in the pines all night.

It turned out--
forever was a field at dusk, frozen golden,
and the end is endless evening--
final fall.

It was Autumn. Leaves grew gold--
glittered, crumbled
like rust.

Snow fell too soon.
A blanket of water.

Only then did we notice
the shadows.

Long blue ghosts,

slanting off our bodies
at angles,

pulling us Eastward.


                                                     ­              -km

One morning you will wake,
find the mirror and discover
that your body is a gourd.

It's as I told you yesterday--

We live in the hollow of life,
within the skin,
in a husk of a home.

You dream of nests, caves,
clefts in the cliff, us kissing
on the floor of a kiva.

So tonight, when you lie beside me,
hidden in the dim, you will drift,

find us in the fold, pressed
against the breast of the valley, the lips
of the stream.

So you must trust me tomorrow
when I tell you--

I love you, but the flood will come.

The moon will mean more.
You'll see.

Tides are everything.

And my voice will sound round
when I say it:

This is the dark place
where you hid as a girl

Curled,

in the belly of the sink.

                                                     -km

Flame is a light thing
until pressed, forced into fire,
forge and inferno.

There's desire enough in this world
without metal. Weight--
It's everywhere.

It's what holds us down.


                                            K.D. Mann

I fold inward by the window all morning,
curled over the conch
I hold pressed to my chest like a child.

It is mine in the dark--
This Pale Sea. It whispers to me.
It says: a shell, a shell, a shell....

Then the shipwreck--
The Mist.
Oars rattle like bones.

Pink smooth ghost,
I am in love.

But our ship has sunk.

I am already a slug,
a salt, a crustacean.

                                                
                                        K.D. Mann

It's November again.

Old men mount bicycles,
wobble down cobblestone,
shift weight
as they pass the churchyard.

Early evening. Cold rain.
The trees are stripped  of their pages.
In the morning:
the scurrying of confetti.

The mailman smiles--
smells old smells.

The children sit in a circle,
mill dead leaves, build a mound
of tree dust between them.

It's November again.

Small boys mount bicycles,
wobble down cobblestone,
shift weight
as they pass the schoolyard.


                                                          K.D. Mann

I.

I wish to be birthed
in reverse.

To recede in slow
motion

back into black
water,

to slide backwards
in a basket

towards the sea.

II.

To be blessed is to slip
without sense,

without sins,

away from this light,
this hum,

this holy hymn
so often sung, a song

that speaks of a new star,
bright born, that burns

with the pressure of sleep.

III.

I see shipwrecks.

Send me home.

Let my basket leak.