Fever, you console
From primordial incalescence you climb
Limber and supple, body slick with perfumed oil
Words must curtsey their abeyance before your shapely ankles
All bow solemn and dripping with stilled play
And as with yuletides closure, fragile things are once again
Wrapped in cotton blankets and stowed safely out of reach
Rain falls soundless; lament against mottled ruin of summer
Devouring scorched and burnt earth, turned gaping and brittle
Till all shape is swallowed and death’s erasure becomes hope again.
The migration of butterflies had you walking, instead of driving
You couldn’t bear the stain they made on windows, pelted by yellow blood
Their destination ruptured
You could take no part; just as when young, you bled at the foot of trees
Supplications for the ceasing of fallen blue eggs
Their fragile carriers strewn rudely and without mercy
Do not discard life so rapid, you beseeched great masked fates
Give them a chance, let them live!
And the Bible pawed cat with yellow eyes and white stripes
Heard your lament, biting down, with grim purpose
And the moon, flung burgundy keyhole pashmina
Containing the precise ruin of a languid moths hungering
Across the sound.
Belly warm on undercurrent, even strong swimmers beware
Of taking a boat too deep, too certain of divination
Where cards may trick licorice tongued bruja from her prophecy
And lovers say farewell without imagining, their sticky unfurl
Might be their last.
Have you seen what happens?
When connecting with ruthless surface, the horse chestnut breaks open
Revealing its white heart to light? Have you seen the glossy sheen of life
Dull opaque with tug of death and inchworm?
How before we are born, we possess the most beautiful indigo feathers?
Tucked in our making.
And some of us …
Never wake from the dream, in time to use them
Before hitting
That hard, unyielding ground.