Wind, don't speak my name,
no squash blossom thunder,
no snap bottom rain.

I ask but a breath on dry tinder,
if just for a moment,
tender as velveteen fumes
between whispers, before a kiss
and her slow setting eyes,
while I, remiss in attending to time
and teeth, look back to the fall of things,
to the flint and the steel of things,
into the dull spark of advents
birthed into this chair,
this cigarette, this coffee,
this rolling silence,
to know that I,
if only for a moment,
have lived up
to all that I've burned.