still, none of it is ever ours

smokestacks filling with rain,
our own throats retching rust
and debris, our bodies afloat
upon a morphine sea.

always wrestling with earth's
alchemy. my sons reside in an
underground kingdom i am
not yet allowed to enter.

i dive into the oxidized strata
of every autumn. mountainsides
migrate, these dilated bones
emerge from the bottom of
october's stony well, dry and
disassembled.

corridors of trees. through the
leaves, a thick matrimony of stars,
each one a reflection of the other;
mass upon flaming mass of
burning saviors.