Soft Opening #1

Given the ghost of a chance,
 love's striations--
      too readily at the same rich vein--
collapse beneath the heft of pointless things.


It all goes quietly as the
crowd mills about.  No one can hear
even though there are so many
people there. 


There is a junction--as if--where love,
like the world-- doesn't end.
A grasshopper has thin armor
and a smashed wing is everything.


The blight has taken over the forest canopy.
Still, squirrels make the perilous jump
from tree
to desolate tree.

Soft Opening #2

At the outer edge of Shreveport--
  birds on a distant wire.
There is no wind.  They remain unswayed.

They appear painted, discrete marks of darkness
in the foreground.   It would be easy to invest them with-- something--
a way to mark the end of a time when you
somehow survived--but that would
suggest they had something to say
about a world in which they have no investment,
being birds.

So let them stay there, birds on a distant wire,
the day dying behind them--
 the sun nothing much--
for as long as the day is
not yet night
you might arrive
as a fragment
from a lost language newly-deciphered,
unearthed in
mid-air.

The Unraveling #1

Startled,
the small birds scattershot
from the road-side trees--
somehow re-gather, a dark
recollection given flight.

Words thrown up--as if--
protection from a summer fog.
Long, the wayward--the torn fabric
pulled up sharp.
Not a word for the
way it went.

Still, wouldn't it be something--
jolted out of life, a pre-existing
condition--to wordlessly gather
together--
the sun lighting up the water--
shot through a bank of clouds
deliberately--

The rent of what was
left of us
slowed down just enough
so everyone could see.

Shreveport. Pink Swath #2

Shreveport. Pink Swath #1

The clouds were up and over,
darkly
holding it in.

then they let
it all go.