5/
Your mind equals the woodwind section flute
and freelance oboe played by Humiston.
I brush the sidewalk as I wait for you
to change the room the light the windows.
Nostalgic flights might amount to penance
in this slipstream imagined as my fate.
“Good Night, Irene,” chants the bar crowd plainly.
Weather laces the song misunderstood.
My arms rehearse releasing you from taut
embrace including lust and admiration.
3/
A peninsula fell wholesale into
the crisp salt water of the ocean’s roar.
I hear dendrites in my sleep when not watched.
Perhaps each mystery resides within.
Months after you lifted off you sent me
a signal now received about breathing.
Map light reaches dishpan hands engaged in
litmus testing substances to fix lives.
How oval love becomes when released
from recipes and polish and white stones.
4/
Sorrow might have followed me home, except
I have a lock on my house and I breathe there.
I phoned her mostly daily, heard the lilt
of language in her voice that mimicked mine.
Rain clouds loom mostly in the east valley,
gait changed by a fractured metatarsal.
I sing a cappella early mornings
glistening with forsythia and birds.
Evening evens even me after
I cry my reflex and let go the hurt.
