37 - Passing

Footbridge west, in wire sheath shooing suicides to privater places

The air is close in agreement — go!

Souls of bleached stars transmigrate earthward as

Fools gold flecks of east hill homes electric test the resistance of viscous night.

Lawnfronts studded with grenade-weight cones

The rot bombs of spendthrift flora, I heft

A good palm-feel and sap-swell

To launch them, plant air in the sedentary fog.

Posters all-over-plastered in town tell me

Find your inner light!

There are so few places, any more.

I catch an errant breath of redwood pine

But it diminishes, like a teacher.

30 - Passer Aux

God fell the morning we kids found

a baby starling on the lawn.

Stepping close cat-softly

our gasping pupils gulped

the light off thick grass

swelled with verdant juice,

arrogant to outdo the absurdity

of a bird in the dirt. Everything

was strange. I pictured

his feet black roots, feathers

shoots and fronds of night

and scattered white seeds

for planting flight in Earth.

But silent, hurt, and sunk in

adolescent bloat his downy

starscape a wilt of absent heaven,

stolen on the descent.

Order: passeriforme, passeri

same as those penny-sparrows who

never fall without the Father.

We tucked the little aeronaut

into a shoebox bed and blanket,

cradled as the car flew to

wherever white-gloved

ministers could right this

blot on invincible birdhood.

We couldn’t stay to see

if he would fly again, though

they all smiled nicely

in that lying way.

Who is responsible for flight?

Where does it go when birds die?

De passer à travers ma vie,

passer aux oubliettes,

mes passereaux infinie.

24 - Empty Circles

Once, hunters thanked the patrician frailty of beasts

for their takeable flesh.

We punched the bloom of exit in buckskin hearts

shucked the husk from souls

exhaled into the mouths of leaves.

Or wherever we imagined they went.

But we are choked in ghost-thick air

laden with refugees from presumed pardon.

Where are the ebon eyes of the dead as they die?

Where is the skin that bounds off the wronged?

The jelly of tomatoflesh slips from its hide

a boiled heart. And on the cutting board

a tap head weeps off wet beads of seed citrine

strung with clusters of soap’s hollow pearls—

I’m sorry, I’m sorry, forgive this too.

19 - We All Felt Sorry For Ourselves

At the funeral, her grandfather

explained why.

The car’s burnout was apt;

she needed purity,

so God came.

The casket was closed,

we each kept our own

favorite ideas.

March, two days later, I huddled over

a grease-sheer paper bag of warmth,

McFries on the El platform floor,

southbound at night.

Her train was headed the other

way, but she smiled,

in pity maybe.

It seemed kind, yet

the door closed,

and I had the particular guilt

of a person using junk

to feel better about

some indignity.

18 - Supplication to the Voiceless

From the time I was a child

I feared the suffering of insects,

bodies mutely pulped.

I watched the machinic clutch

upon a mangled ant, grinding

down last limbs in dogged

irrespect of its own dying.

With each burst bulb of

a laden wasp I waited for

some puff of their interior

mystery to be released.

But silent, they marked the

limits of my knowledge,

those wounded gods.

I pray to them daily for their wisdom,

because I want to be ready.

4 - Prayer for Stagnant Waters

See, a shred of police caution tape
yellow trampled and tucked
into a pine chip bed:
the quiet of crimes.
This place,
dappled with wrung lemon rinds
bottle mouths kissing through
topskin of pond green, bobbing
mallards
the madness of swans,
it swallows the dreams of wakers
forgetting iniquitous night.
At this humid shrine of the languid
I pray for my salvation:
Send my soul with the Gerridae skaters
cross the membrane of tenebrous deep.