The forgotten words meant
The forgotten words we meant to disinter last night appear as tea spoons of dew
on the dandelions in the slumbersome morning, you call out
the breath we drew upon the dark stories walk heavenward, until
they become frost warm on the shoulders of the torpid grass in the dying sun
you call out you call out early November’s remains
entirety noted on a page of an alchemist’s book
matter over matter, clothes buckle in the winter window
words white as a hare in the snow
camouflage drowning the pass of Spring’s chloroform
at 23, everything is infinite and possible, everything
but death
bones arranged on an inquisitor’s metal slab
tools and detritus scuttle in Holmes’ black bag
a satchel crammed with summer’s algebra, alone
the tip of a fork scratching across gravel while elocution abides in a backroom
the stitching of love long in the field’s ache
within you ghosts acquire voices1
when you buried your grandmother in the rain in umber autumn
a hole the size of eternity remained as caution dropped in, drip by drip
two years later she returned, replaced the green words with a red box
a package'd gesture on the family china, the covenant of a hat
the sung song in the corner of a room where spiders and an ungainly prayer gallop
toward the waiting see-spray, the grief stirred into the bunglesome tea
at 60, everything is finite and impossible, everything
in the knees’ ache carries death
we wrote poems with our body in a darkened room, spoke with gestures in the air through the late night, in Taiwan we swayed beneath the red lights and the ephemeral belief of a few hours just so, nothing but music and longing and dogs’ carcass rotting in the street, embodied sound when the night for once seemed infinite and we moved into the light from the shadows, there was life and there was cadence and there was language replaced by a new syntax and unthinking, one day there would be bliss and we all would be free before the burials mauled into black leaves and tilled soil for the bones and dearth, the remonstrations marching on spines along a long afternoon, extinction’s rebellion, all the words and discarded snacks, promises that kick up in the dust
of what
all our words now forgotten
1-Calvino
