the poems the world left behind
i
at night she hums into a stanza’s furlong
amid the grief and the green recitations
“I am trying to describe all this in a picture”
to drag the impossible vocabulary & replenished color
beneath the morning as our tongues open to the sun
along beam and dream of the fire in the backyard
cicada wings landing in patterns on Pessoa and Antunes in the garden
the fisherman lifting his boots buckles onto the tile of his life
love laments in electric currents as a fog horn sounds a dream
the pond’s hair static, the fingers in the kiln
in afternoon you fall into the mud under the linden
empty your yellow heart onto the ironing board of a late jade afternoon
here now we splatter our days run muddy with diesel-perfumed hills
until we awoke
ii
you woke and put away the pen and took to the air
with a caboose tied at your waist filled with your life and words
vellichor, petrichor, apricity, and the noctivagant
the vocabulary of dreams scratch at your forehead
while the poems in the leaf piles leave the world behind
and burn
for: Wan-lin and Ka-sing
