Overlooking Empty Chickadee Nests

The one I do not need to speak to anymore. Black bears on side roads in no hurry. Baby skunks, nobody scared.

The one who does not need me to speak.

Men for whom a muse was the whole point of poetry.

Minor chords. Rain falling until mid-morning then slowing. Mist in the garden. Did I mention lower back pain?

Look at all these unfinished poems. Look at all these boats that have been back and forth to Florida. 

Look at my cousin floating across the bottom of the sea pretending not to know me. 

Whiskey-colored quartz. Buddha statues overlooking empty chickadee nests. No really - what hurts?

I am lost in sodden flags turning back and forth like corpses at the end of knotted ropes.

Your equivalency is not my equivalency. We will die and the particulars of our love story will die but love will not die, it will only stop being "our" love.

Nobody cries "road trip" anymore. Nobody is suggesting Tschaikovsky was correct about angels.