For you, I’ll explain
            the dream:

lemons turning away
            from green—

bright cargo and
            heavy; they fall,

they unhinge,
            they sail like

a hundred swift ships
            sack and burn

then say goodbye. 
            For you, I’m through

with need—last, enough,
            no more.   Except

we’re never without
            that song.

A clique of flies
            core to center. 

Sweetness as sweetness
            does in our body

hides under sharp
            white ribs. 

A singing of tongues,
            so many I lose count.

            –––

I count; I remember
            a singing

of tongues. 
             Their hum.  Flies

circling a mason jar. 
            Lamb’s ear heat. 

Voiceless breath—
            open, cover, confess;

this wanting and
            the mouth it carries

across flesh.  Little ship
            of hunger.

I’m rapt as a child
            hiding in leaves,

reading reds and yellows,
             new roof and walls

luxuries of a home
            made of storms,

of rivers, of droughts.  
            He pretends

to be swallowed.
            He is. 


            –––


We’re not
            inside a whale

or cormorant. 
            We don’t live

in tin drums
            of any belly, hull

or hell, where it’s hard
            to tell dark

from dark.
            The problem is light—

a new kind of blind—
            my hands

turn touch to sight
            and like waking see

shape before color
            luck before fate.

And the mind, heartbeat
            slow, awake,

turns a day into           
            might. 


            –––


You might     
            with touch

fill the sailcloth
            of my neck,

keel to nest and
            launch to sea,

to island, to palm, 
            to sand bleached

as bone this body
            of possibility:

our life away   
            from life.

Think shipwreck.
            Think crash

and shore, deck timbers
            we gather

to burn, and, without
            rescue, live.     


            –––


Let’s live
            upstate, spell

ourselves in ice. 
            In a quiet village 

aproned owners salt
            a path to their door.  

Pines send snow below. 
            White breath,

white room.
            If I think of sea,

tremolo and trade
            the sunstroke waves

light as lemons
            I’ll say nothing.  

I’m anchor
            and joy.   


            –––


I fear no anchor
            inked to arm

or neck when I
            undress; no

double barbs of stay
            and stay, flesh

never transparent
            as a house

without walls. 
            Each body lives

a hundred lives
            and is silent 

about where
            it sleeps.


            ­–––


We sleep. 
            We live. 

We go back
            to the root

of desire—
            from the stars—  

as we could lash
            light to skin,

and bear it.
            For you

this dream.