Poetry

The town, my dear, is closing down: dead-
Bolts slipping into their sleeves, cicadas insisting

These arms, after all,
are open for no one
else. Posture of air

Come work with me awhile, Hayden,
I can use your company in the shed 
among tools your hands have never lost

What’s a song without measure,
Or a verse without meter,
Company without pleasure,

Picasso the matelot, his Colt cocked,
Amiably inert in the photo
From Houston’s museum studio,

A woman
downwind from Nagasaki now dying
is forced to decide

The last time you were beside me
it was April.
I knew it was over

In flight: bird, arrow, grief.
Static: a red chair
waiting for someone in a patch of sun