There is thunder on the light wind,
And I wonder if she hears me
Across a glass table eyes
Cling to her delicate movements.

Her hand tips the frosty glass
As the other hovers in suspense of a stray drop,
Like she could catch everything
That might spill onto the cold pavement
where we sit.

The rain begins to drop from the clouds.
As she sits on the passenger seat
A car sailing down worn roads hidden from sight.
I sit on the edge
Of the umbrella, my face slick already,
Eyes avoiding the place
where she sat.

The inveterate stump splits
sere flakes of tree-bark
falling upon the frigid grass
wet from rainclouds
settling in the yard.

A wedge placed in a foible
metal rusted from years of use
a crack running
down weathered outer layers
to a hollow center
filled with refuse.

I am handed the axe
I feel its weight
suitable for the work
the old man has begun
whose grey hands
can no longer complete.

We pick up the pieces, his back groans and clicks
rain continues to pelt my hood
I mention Thoreau
He just stares
with indifference to the gloom
my boots are soaked with the mud of the day
I put the tools in the shed for another time.

My legs are sagging
loose against his table
sitting in the living-room,
The clock chimes in five times
we complain in echoes
that reverberate throughout the old house
the striated oak stretches against
the wind as the clock stops
its banter.

The kitchen light creeps across the entryway
placing itself on the window
and I see a ghost,
flotsam carried on waves of light
and neuroplasticity of course
that is taken in
this sober-minded leap
a way away from this haunting.

My attention is caught
by and by I have been
out of mind he has found me.

Sallow lights irradiate the snow as it caresses the windshield.
The heart pumps faster as the car is pushed
to the speed limit,
the speedometer hovering
before sliding across the line.

An inquiry is posed by the silence of the speakers,
as flickers of red still wash down from the rear view mirror.

Lids break over dusty lenses,
My heart pummels the walls until it bleeds,
ribcage rattling like a broken furnace.

This moment extends past the cage of sensibility,
onto a new horizon where darkness
and light
are not merely consorts lying,
pinky fingers playfully intertwined
as a stray hair closes the distance between
their bodies yearning,
all of law is subject
to their complete breath burning.