while translation—black gold/rapeseed/wheat

the startled spillage over streets, fields

the caskets vultures scent—is rubble that fits into the palm.

Again, spring has come too late.

I am thinking of you on that convoy

your teddy bear flown to Washington, D.C.

Spring with its stubborn licks of root

long green muscles aching to push as in childbirth

the time of softened earth, of shovel and hoe.

What will it trade for bones that still have years of growth?

A mourning ring around the sun, a brooch with a sharpened pin.

The ethics of want can drain a river

but the muck has turned your eyes a strange brown.

Eye language, hand language. Bodies plummet

crow-dark, for a moment investigating the breath

that passes in a forlorn plume of desire.

Is the last thought madness? A country shapes on the tongue

but the wheeling sky, the crust of snow

the clouds composed of horses

how a building was there then not there.

Days stretch beyond into a place where songs are made.

Where songs are made, strands of black and gold

tinged with iridescent melt are grapevines of the killed harvest;

children lose their dogs. Caravans of bitterness

go winding into realms of the future and the futureless.

Your mother says love, pray love

eat these seeds and sprout a story only you can tell.