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.