What We Wake To Is What We Fell Asleep To
We pass a cup back and forth,
burning the tips of our fingers.
It is filled with yesterday’s hopes.
We are all children
heavy with the future, too heavy
to run anymore so we turn our faces
from the bright sky. It is enough
to know that angels come in many grays,
like cement and last year’s sweaters,
we don’t need to see them flying overhead
tearing holes in the sky.
The sound is like the ocean
if someone tore a hole in the ocean,
which they might have. Who knows what’s
been done while we were busy making tea,
the bird bones of our shoulders splintering
as we brush against each other, falling
into the cups like lumps of sugar
or maybe salt.
From a Distance
Yesterday’s flags no longer wave.
Clouds hang dark and dampening.
What do I know about condensation…
My clothes stick to my skin as if soaked with guilt.
I eat a hot meal. I take a hot shower,
My skin turns the pink of sunset on snow.
In a dream little mechanical birds
sprang up out of my hands. I fed them
poetry, flung them to scatter in the winds,
to seek new targets with their sharp metal beaks.
What do I know about mechanics,
about metal, about wind…?
I suppose I know something
about the sustenance of poetry.
About how poems bleed out of you
on the darkest of days, and with that
start to pull you up even as you’re falling.
From a distance I watch
as the brush strokes become the painting,
counting the petals as they encircle the heart of seeds.