Dear Preacher

Dear Preacher: Although you met me in a carboniferous state

when grass was still purple, and not yet blanched by sugars from the sun,

I remember you chinking red wine glasses, the stems as giant as redwoods,

•

at my bedside and I have spent every evening since

then, toasting your life

•

that could have been mine to save --- :

in the sense of dolphins that return a red and bruised man to shore.

***

Dear Preacher: I wrote you poems after you left, sickly and transparent,

and emailed them to you while you were at service, healing the needy,

•

understanding nothing of how your attention would

also travel ---- back to your books and your people

•

who speak also to me, but in different tones. Blue as lapels, blonde

as studio models with only your lens as their desire. Your red tapes ---:

•

your green room, a vestibule where only the cleanly baptised

may enter to be deciphered.

***

Dear Preacher: There are nights I would sleep nestled as my own embryo,

away from you, while you read portions of sacred texts and highlighted them

•

until the early hours ---: and if I

asked you a question you would bend over to my dreams

•

chisel open my skull and lace your answer in sutures.

Neither of us know truly how to tread carefully when

•

life is holy with movement.

***

Dear Preacher: Let the record show I invented you

and our embarrassing grey love story, except for the photographs

•

and letters

•

and the awkward meeting a year later at a restaurant

when you pretended that nothing ever had been.

•

When you are gone, I hear and carry the magnitude

of our creation ---: your hot claret voice in my purple heart never stops.