Behold My Unraveling

Doubt darkens the obvious highway.

Rain secures the bluet's petals in tight folds oblivious to desire.

Awaken and walk and know thyself as two feet with a purpose.

Rolling in folds of blanket alone all night, thought's poorly lit cinema home to what is broken.

Letters come, are tucked away, and we sit out front.

We sit out front and talk about money and house plans and land.

All night one saw with the clarity the responsibility for decision - and the unwillingness to make it which is only fear - and why?

Why is it not enough to go part of the way?

What inside us is content with half-measures, with approximations of love?

The string tails off, stained by the world, and I behold my unraveling the way an antelope watches as lions tear into its heart.

Emily Dickinson asking after God but going into death.

Destroy my poems indeed.

Rain comes in the morning when we are preparing a long walk, and something in us quietens, something that loves a poncho, and softening.

Blood dissolving in water as water gathers on the sea.

She is not implicated as she thinks - nor as she would like - yet she is implicated helpfully, and it will have to do as there is no time left to explain.

Dead horses, dead calves, dead dogs, dead chickens, dead rabbits, dead cats, dead flowers, dead trees, dead cousins.

Dead center: study this phrase carefully!

Expelled from the white garret at last we sleep poorly - oh the thrumming of the heart when night allows the interior raid - and stumble into a gray light, a kind of prayer.

A kind of there, actually, but here.

Between shoes and a quill pen, lilac and what lilac represents.