I paid attention, recorded
everything: red
big moonrise, quick over cloudbank.
The sourmilk scent: mums wilt
on my altar, flesh ashing,
cymbals. All of us clanging: “Wrong,
wrong, wrong.” The fruit
offering baked into an ache.

A beautiful bright
house of slight
blue to walk through,
its name “Tomorrow
and the Big
Sky Who opens
Up With It.” Sliver

of lapis in my changepocket.
My thumbnail hill-lost,
wandering your clavicle.

My heart’s throat
and the song you pull
from it. Your lilypetal
fingers bloom
onto my palm.

Thrum of thumbed string,
secret as a tree root drinks rain.
There is no lack of you.

---

originally published in Albatross #27