I hold her within unpartable
muzzle of gray, in day
on day blank stare of sky.
I’m dreaming the stratosphere,
the she she cannot become,
the layer onto which the glory
of the birds is borne.
The more the rain,
the more she comforts me.
Goodbye, mornings of night,
days dim with slate grass,
the absent street.
Midday headlights and spare snow.
Each tree carefully carved
with crystal brightness.
I walk into waking.
I open my mouth, and my voice
becomes cloud and ice.
Goodbye wet cocoon,
goodbye curved palm of fog.
Today we are born
in the clarity of color
as it scatters light, equalizing
and shimmering.
We walk under fuzzy-edged
balm. Goodbye, deep drown,
flakes brighter than gone sun.
For days, cloud hid the open blue belly.
But now, we lie back in the snowy yard,
the walk shoveled.
We lie back into winter. From here,
the landscape is increments of sun,
white openings, many-colored light.
Sugar and salt, ivory
and marble.
Open and closed.
Goodbye, hello, goodbye,
changeable heaven. There
is nothing in such vapors
which lasts for long. We greet
in the same syllable we part.
My body and her body cloud, vessels
of water. A stream
as open as the sky.
We become each other.
The air is clearing,
and everything we once could see
is gone.