Misstep No. 1

In the land where the moon and the sun
Clawed up the earth to bury their hatchet
For compromise, yet hesitant and forced,
And built an emptiness to match it;
Where boiled silver flows through grass
And, wincing, pushes desperately into mud
With painful kisses, swollen with tears
Like the inflamed, bloated sky trickling with blood,

I find myself every two weeks or so.

It is from this land of damp gray cotton
I write to you all those discarded letters;
And watch for birds or lost night moths
In cobweb and faintly clinking rotten fetters,
That fall out of the clouds like wet paper.
And I notice each leaf, delicately tinted
With a muted, artificial almost, calm —
No author, only my own eternal autumn hinted

At that sodden cardboard on the apple tree.

It has soggy teeth from old age
And feathering papyrus skin;
Much like you’ve lost your shining polish.
We’re above the clouds, the brittle air is thin:
It flows through the naked wire,
Dangling like a noose from corpulent oak,
I fear the fall sometimes — I’m human,
Weirdly. It’s been long since you’ve talked

Despite me knowing every crevice of your body.