What if we were old together
and I was cleaning up the kitchen
and you were looking at the crows
and the blush of the horizon
and you stopped by the door
and you looked in at me
at my flat hair and hips
at my ugly darkening place
and thought of some time
before the hurricanes kept coming
before the creeping moss
and the heavy blanket tides
before the needle of time
pulled its thread back to center
when we were just beginning
to end
In the summer, the birds move up the lawn
to the porch. They are bright and black
and women, all of them, soaking in the sun
as it warms the wood. They do not wait
for what might happen; they soar up to the sky
at the first crack of lightning.
I meet your eyes across the threshold -
Here comes the crash of thunder,
then the flight.
Take a horse,
pull back his lips,
look at his teeth:
Then set him running
with a few curved words.
See his hair
flowing freely,
dark and dusty
in the wind,
see the stretch
to his muscles
like the dry earth
breaking free,
or breaking down
or breaking out,
like his full rooted veins
pushing out
against tan canvas.
Against the night
he is a bright
shooting star,
crashing towards love
or the finish line,
losing pieces
of his hooves
as his sharp brittle spit
carves the marks of his pain
into the crumbling
cold dirt.
Set him free,
if you can
into the endless black sky.