Use your long words
describe the smell of memory
antiseptic
there in your transparent igloo
born to incubate
smoke before it’s legal on your mother’s habit
bequeath me the tendency
to live without need
from pockets we pull
the nurture the seed
sprouting in defiance
when everything else died of frost bite
against the ire of a late Winter storm
gusting itself into white rage
through the glass you see
yourself being re-made
in the eyes of old women whose wrinkles
make a universal puzzle
and the swell of hills
cast over with violet
a heaven of sorts in setting light
glazing countertops
for foot prints of unseen beast
leading off into nearby copse
could we will ourselves
another go around?
stepping backward into
infancy, chewing the umbilical
surrounded by potential like
a wet firework strains to explode
would it be any different?
your hands, molding my shape
DNA
the type of pasta eaten
over Lake Como the day
of conception
holy was the love that bore the wish
lost in steepled weather vein
glistening against straining light
a mockery of control
just out of reach
there she is
eighty years from now and
just re-born
in unfurled leaves and first sprouting
green a forbidden thing
among the white ushers and
dark flitting ponderable
marveling we can be conscious
of ourselves and of nothing more
than a stream aching to unfreeze
creep closer to living
inch by inch
two warm bodies without a thing between them
aside the shame of knowing
we live both futile and richly
worming our way into the meat
and tender bruise of absolving
those things we believe we need