Devour me
said the sky to the sun
bend me to your will
And it does, most cloudless days,
bending blue, an ache
both sorrowing and joyous.
Devour me
said the wick to the flame
let me burn, just that moment
So it does. I feel
something stir, like the wind just rising,
I cannot tell
if I hunger, or am hungered for.
For all that is lost. The bottle opener. The flea-market ring. A telephone number.
A day or an hour. The battery of the afternoon sinking into evening. A name, a face.
A longing familiar, its hollows filling with a vague humming noise, like the humming of bacteria in the earth.
A matrix of loss. Like a pair of hands cupped to receive.
Like a hollow-point bullet blooming out on impact.
Like the cavity of light this room becomes each morning, and the dreaming I ascend from, into shattered night, the soft flesh of things bent into discernable objects:
A red book. A chair, with a gray jacket thrown over. A blue bowl. A white scarf.
These, a lexicography for living.
