you were the salt in my soup
the shore to my uneasy sleep
your full moonlight drew me
a sharp-edged shadow
i watched lean foxes lope
atop your garden wall
and took happiness
in both hands
a steering wheel
warm from your touch
spinning through the lifelines
etched in my palms
without my glasses
your best smiles went
to my bad teeth
my beard full of birds
everything in shades of blur
except one cricket
and my grief rises
like wind in a drought
this brief striptease of drizzle
gusting sideways
what have we done
to each other’s earth
the burning forests
the erupting methane
i turn again from wholly
fool to foul
to another buggy day
in deer-tick season
bathe my clothes in poison
shoulder my pack