Another Ecstatic World

the sun had already drowned / that day we found the meadow burning

embers of grass rained like fireflies / we chased them rabidly far into the hapless night

I want to say I never forgot you / but we did, we both did / in that pasture where I died

the crash snapping our heads back into the dream / so far, dark and without touch

maybe the blazing grass is breaking / as our heels are rising

before the sun rose so epiphytic and entranced / the night sky full of fletchings

all the stars are forms of ice / do you see how they shiver / falling like insects

embedded in stunned glass / scattered across the memories on our skin

and you, a naked heart in the rain / stuck in that liminal space / singing a name before birth

our lives now half gone / remaining yet full of wonder

I fixate as new words cauterize / as a day's memory shimmers / a nickel at the base of the well

though we remain separate inside the mosaic of the dream

we find the sky lacerated by the vicious tongue of time / & it is through falling ourselves that we learn the sounds made before water / before the steam of bread / before the herb which lights the limbic system

I sing the words now / the ones I had promised you / I was always here

great teachers never say how dark dawn is / how a candle across the empty universe

is extinguished by bodies breaking / disintegrating in the sound of touch

how we both longed for beauty but persisted as shipwrecks / in forgetting the way blood leaves

a cold hand parting that last time / I would forgive you / nothing has been lost

there has been no cataclysm / the fountain rings with pride

how do you imagine you heard my voice so clearly