You open like branches

you lean over my head
like a sky getting ready to sleep
like the sky resting
in the crown of an ancient tree
a tree grown into the earth,
almost like metal,
turning from artery to vein,
stiffening in sacred rapture
until it darkens into gold, growing inward
into the seething, molten earth
where they dug my grave
here I lie, my hands, holy slaves,
crossed, following Ararat

so I don’t have to breathe
and through the mind and eyes of roots,
of branches, of those before me
I look up into the dome of the sky,
into the quiet arch of a hidden temple
of a hidden you and I

holding my breath
I look toward the mountains, the sky—
an overturned, hollowed hull
of your ship
half-filled with a wave
a salt, sea-dark wave
where the sky reflects itself
dressed in distant tropical constellations
and falling stars

the dark, dark frame
doesn’t scare me

it feels like infinity
or maybe
like a longing without end

I wish I could hold
just one falling star
in my hands

hands—tangled branches—
crossed, holy slaves,
rising like salt waves
reach all the way up
to catch

again
and again

here
where the sky
touches the earth