Poetry

Nervous, twigs split, become swallows, 
jeté the platinum poring chits

over horizon’s bistered tinge.
Is a murderer secreted in us all,

Unmarried, the heart ejaculates
what it must, scarlet-purled, arterial,

away, away. Or conversely, married,
it requires all—venous, freighted with wastes.

We lived in a painting, a pastoral promise of stepped Berkshire hills, 
the Midlands of green meadows in the distance dotted with sheep

To protect the instrument, she spent all night
gesturing at plates or nodding yes to the glass of white. 

That God first placed an angel
with a flaming sword to guard
Eden’s closed gates, that He gave us
signs to declare a different logic,

In that endless season of dead grass
and rotted pumpkins, I was a boy
who stood in a tree and named all the cows

Leroy, wisdom in a chuckle, 
            Gold chains drape around his neck—
                         High yellow on high yellow—

He walks back from the
                                         window in half-shadow

a half-shade himself

The day moon the
                                     spirit of the morning

The girl seems to fly
the hawk above her, a kite of feathers