“hope and sex and dreams
Are still surviving on the street
Look at me, I’m in tatters!”
–Richards and Jagger
I returned before your words, in the silent spaces
spoken between us, let loose like butterflies
lifting as one from a rosemary bush
to dizzy the air with their dance’s delight.
I focused on our conversation’s minutia,
worried each splintered half-word reaction;
as if our pasts could be rebuilt from wisps,
or salvage a dry hope into an exotic other.
Not quite falling, nor quite balanced,
I stumbled, passing my world’s horizon
in the parabola of a songbird’s flight;
until shattered, like tufts of frozen feathers,
across the shifting floor, my day’s
mosaic failed to form a coherent web
to cocoon my trouble thoughts away.
(September 5, 2016)
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