the moon counting its delicate birds

shapes the seed to what i wanted

fell until a cloud

come back to see the feeding of the bell

alters the dream in its dark blue cloth

then the cage breaks apart and flies away

drinks rain from blood in the trees

kneels in my hand after climbing up the rain

ferries the island to its blind stone heads

promised the nameless their own door

weeps sand into the shadow with opened eyes

wept a black vulture into the valley of bones 

melts into prayer across the skin of a thorn

waits with a touch in the corridor outside my dream

wakens the voice behind glass at the top of the sea

the color that comes back as windflower

the first sunrise will go on asking an older fire

the long limbs of your light climbing a mountain

where arches come ashore and the saint is barren

plows everything back into the afterlife

sees into a blind eye

you went where i lived when air

will start everywhere at once with breaths to come

wash salt with my final name

finds moss across from a star

the hand i eat from within

one drifting away forms the parade

sunlight crushed down to the unborn

inside the beetle voyages

starting to fall forever if i could be wingless

not yet the oriole before sunrise

having to carry the island to its huge stone heads

like a face without eyes the moon spills its sand

what if everything else was taken out of me except the parade within the dream

isn't God that moment the mirror in your mind breaks

eyes that open at midnight in a room deep in a whisper

i made a man without a face

                                                who sat there quietly dreaming

within a pearl

my silences are sky

                        oak tree with one eye open

isn’t a moon

the choice between

birth and dream

where do the dead stop being dead

                                                                        and marry in wine-colored dresses

there are rooms in the house one should not enter

                                                                                                strong winds that only whisper

who is the owner

                                 of what arises

                                                            between your soul

                                                                                               and the cave filled with sky

when i retrieve my bones from the vulture's wings i find they've learned to whisper

when my heart turns yellow how far will i be from the gaze of the sea

is the voice that speaks after your body is forgotten heard in silence or sleep

the pattern in the rain filling other people    your house goes on to live alone

one can never see all the way inside the tapping of an abandoned crutch

is it a question with the face of a yellow bird that is trapped inside your mirror

i dreamed an eclipse
to see the moon dreaming
some
climbed into the sky and died

where are we going when we get there together

pulse

of eternity    soft

            wrist of the sky

on which         side of death

            is rest

my eclipse reveals what the moon is dreaming    the shine of what cannot be gathered

the wound her cheek left on the moon longs to be still alive

the way to see light was once in the sky    and the moon bright with forgetting

little child where the moon hides her blood    passes through my heart

i love when it rains an open sky    mountain silently watching inside

how shall i speak to the fingers of your name as they sow my blood and water

men used as graveyards    nothing left of nothing    my hands unravelling inside

a fire as small as my sleep in your side    is the eye of the heart

the dream outside of me i somehow startled    a brightness i did not do

my light hangs from the sky like death in a hive    like salt opening its hand

blue is brave    like speaking from the space inside a seed    like night on god

child to the thirsty sea    do not teach but draw me

the tenderness of a stem in my mouth :: what cannot be gathered from your eyes

when do we risk becoming a river isn't a question of desire

because the clear song of the sky must be preserved my roof melts away in the cold

when started i was dust    dew filled with moon    fire in an unformed mouth

how did crows in a sky that has never been become the light of the world

we undress together    down to our satchel of lost poems    refusing to be more than alive

a corpse knows nothing about its garden    the way we live is not even dying

the two ends of the sky hang from one stark tree    a day too cold to plant death

yearning for the honey of the sadness of your skin    i give in to the moon in the window

in this garden that grows what cannot be acquired    my darkness quivers with snow

between stone and star i have learned slowly    how on one black wing we spin

in the ear of the cry between sycamore and moon    i open all my windows

my blood is your milk filled with night

those who say there is no one to see    is where every living thing has gone

in a field full of light and death    it grows hard to see the one who will come

winter stars slip into us one by one    the skies of our vanishing grow large

within the rose who never tires    my heart gives birth to many hands

the dying sun stares into my sky as if awakening is near

a small horse leans
into her juniper tree—
no other life but sky

because i also cling to birth
this december sun
is warming

the little river is watching

            and crows that stitch the morning sky

                        and those who have died    but had eyes

dreams that visit when we are most awake :: the snow i bury underground

piece by piece    like the wood i split    to feed flames that are going blind

the inner space of snow is vast and skin—do i hear our yearnings agree?

the eye that always watches you is everywhere i dream

orchid bud swells inside

so many suns crowding the exit

i give birth to a sky that refuses to curve

what i want to say drew

its last breath—

            beheld became what can’t be changed

cut limbs falling

upon awakened ground—

            the silence that follows called wound

the driver of the chestnut mare is waiting like a friend

black cart quiet

the wind you’ve become

today we cleaned the gardens for winter
left smoking piles of disbelief
dug up a crescent moon

i hear the clatter of nothing falling

at midnight in the kitchen—

my wife wakes up, dies

sunlight weeping from her eyes

sat through the storm last night

            wondered where all that rain fell—

tight roof, sound mind, eternity chasing its tail

freshly made, i twist in the wind

            snake skin returning to an earlier molt

            the dark in a dog set to howl

a catalpa leaf bares its teeth, rakes

my face over and over

makes blood flow clear as water

i stand naked in the wind this morning

sky flies backward toward a sun

darker than light can see

like the child up in a tree

staring lost through swarming leaves

your being has entered the dream

squirrel will be killed again yesterday

there on the road—

whose future measured by the number of feeding crows

moon whimpers

harvesters slit the night

father cannot find child in the stubble of the field