to reach the sink with clouds then settle
as seawater, wait for rain to strike
shatter and along the same path
return as lightning from a fever
that’s not a flower, still trembling
the way her breasts curved
are collecting dew –your hands
are never wet enough
and around your chest the scent
splashes over the great weight
you’re breathing in
–what keeps you in the air
is the full light from stars
kept cold under running water
draining their smoke for the surface
stretching out, lifting the Earth
closer and closer as if once
you had something in half to put back.
*
Arm over arm you expect
the way a child plays with sand
though once inside this graveyard
all that’s left from the ocean
are the pilings holding on
leaning against that gate
where death came into this world
as a wooden handle –you expect
to carry away the Earth it knows about.
*
Even without a caress its petals
wait, try more red than usual
then sweets, sent along with the scent
from the latest hillside till one grave
blossoms before the others
and you are at last alone
beside a single afternoon, holding on