at the corner is one car hinged on its side, another swept wide and sideways
glass and fear and pooling fuel. the tear of folding steel gone
sucked into air with the reversing night

the first true noise has come and gone without me. it is the absence of it that rises up
to welcome a day without pause – unaware of what it has taken.

And those rare moments when time pauses
hung on the heavy drape of potential
to consider consequence, effect, desire
in the silence that pulls at the inner ear.
Each a firm fingernail on soft wood
recollecting impression and mem’ry,
a micro liter from the ocean of days
equally dark, reflective as the whole
measuring depth and surfaces’ stretch
against sky.

My orbiting matrona
sieving sight from me
most elegant liar
to make me believe otherwise
I want to watch you sleeping
so shallowly in your watery hold
pull open your warm folds quietly
to the holding at the center.
It is there the compass shifts against the pole
the vane that turns the viking home
with perfect regularity.

Metaphysical weight hews to the base
and tethers the atmosphere
lifting the anchor in the bay
the spare space white floors
white lofty ceiling
where for several moments
my barometric brain was lifted,

Squeeze the fold for it to measure straight
wedge the body into its place
forget all you’ve learned and watch it fall tenderly

Knee to knee find our forgotten eye
surfacing collapse the frame and begin
the walk again.

Urban volumes increment
sliding in under old storm windows
the muffling released into
metallic static for the intervening weeks
when the soils surface heaves its thawing exhale
and thrusts us into new, wet shoes.
This awakening is sensational silk sandpaper
against my skin, squinting brightness hitting
my brittleness.

Finch feathers, small and precise rock down
to the dry, tangled raspberry
and I stare up the thick trunk
to glimpse a pair through
branches spiraled out above me.
I know that soon after I will find
one or two papery chicks in the needles below
top heavy and cold.

The silence of the winter
mornings dissolve overnight
the new, ever new again
rises in reds and greens
to wide weathered boughs
that so elegantly support enough
and never more.

Uncovered a medic’s daughter
centered in the quarry
coughed up salt on her palm
to take the future from her lips.

Hitch the volt onto the stitch
anchor the fold, sway the head
close this fraying rocket ship.

The sky has long been singing
to compass through the wind
riddle’s song upon the seas
let disappearing begin.