The light of a candle
               is transferred to another candle—
               spring twilight.

love between us is
speech and breath. loving you is
a long river running.

^{(for Emmett Louis Till)}

1.
Your limbs buried
in northern muscle carry
their own heartbeat

2.
Mississippi ...
alert with
conjugated pain

3.
young Chicago
stutterer whistling
more than flesh

4.
your pores
wild stars embracing
southern eyes

5.
footprints blooming
in the night remember
your blood

6.
in this southern
classroom summer settles
into winter

7.
i hear your
pulse swallowing
neglected light

8.
your limbs
fly off the ground
little birds ...

9.
we taste the
blood ritual of
southern hands

10.
blue midnite
breaths sailing on
smiling tongues

11.
say no words
time is collapsing
in the woods

12.
a mother’s eyes
remembering a cradle
pray out loud

13.
walking in Mississippi
i hold the stars
between my teeth

14.
your death
a blues, i could not
drink away.

(Haiku Erasure of Lord Byron's "Lines Inscribed Upon a Cup Formed from a Skull")

Start spirit; behold
the skull. A living head loved
earth. My bones resign

the worm, lips to hold
sparkling grape's slimy circle,
shape of reptile's food.

Where wit shone of shine,
when our brains are substitute,
like me, with the dead,

life's little, our heads
sad. Redeemed and wasting clay
this chance. Be of use.

apostrophe
the nuthatch inserts itself
between feeder and pole
 

semicolon
two mallards drifting
one dunks for a snail
 

ellipses
a mourning dove
lifts off
 

asterisk
a red-eyed vireo catches
the crane fly midair
 

comma
a down feather
bobs between waves
 

exclamation point
wren on the railing
takes notice
 

colon
mergansers paddle toward
morning trout swirl
 

em dash
at dusk a wild goose
heading east
 

question mark
the length of silence
after a loon’s call
 

period
one blue egg all summer long
now gone

^{John William Boone (1864–1927) world-renowned Ragtime pianist}

C

my motto for life

                      - merit, not sympathy, wins-

                                              my song against death.

E♭

i stroke piano’s

                           eighty eight mouths. each one sings

                                        hot colors of joy

                                                                                                 F

                                                                                     pentatonic black

                                                                 keys raise up high into bliss,

                                                 born to sing my name

                       F#

                    whippoorwill, hawk, crow

                                   sing madrigals for blind men.

                    forests blooms through each note.

                                   G

                               my eyes: buried deep

                                             beneath earth’s skin. my vision

                               begins in her womb.

                             B♭

                         darkness sounds like God

                                             flowering from earth's molten tomb...

                         writhed wind. chorded cries.

C

rain, flower, sea, wind

           map my dark horizon. i

                                              inhale earth’s songbook

To everything, there is a season of parrots. Instead of feathers, we searched the sky for meteors on our last night. Salamanders use the stars to find their way home. Who knew they could see that far, fix the tiny beads of their eyes on distant arrangements of lights so as to return to wet and wild nests? Our heads tilt up and up and we are careful to never look at each other. You were born on a day of peaches splitting from so much rain and the slick smell of fresh tar and asphalt pushed over a cracked parking lot. You were strong enough—even as a baby—to clutch a fistful of thistle and the sun himself was proud to light up your teeth when they first swelled and pushed up from your gums. And this is how I will always remember you when we are covered up again: by the pale mica flecks on your shoulders. Some thrown there from your own smile. Some from my own teeth. There are not enough jam jars to can this summer sky at night. I want to spread those little meteors on a hunk of still-warm bread this winter. Any trace left on the knife will make a kitchen sink like that evening air

the cool night before
star showers: so sticky so
warm so full of light