My Throat Opens and Hummingbirds Pour Out

The moon plays tricks on me again, never where I expect it to be. Earth undulating, gliding through heavens or is this what it feels like to die. Suddenly a way of speaking that does not recognize the risk it takes, spilling like water down a hill. In a dream she kisses my throat, and my throat opens and hummingbirds pour out, thousands upon thousands, her delight in the effulgence tangible. Is it all okay then after all? A light snow falling all afternoon, the writing steady and clear, as if steeling its author for a fatal drop. I remember making model ships and airplanes with Dad, and birdhouses and cutting boards, all the while telling myself stories about lost boys with secrets maps and books, and the ones from whom they have to hide. The solace she offers, the spaces in me that her solace does not reach, and the loneliness beyond those spaces that is the cosmos begging to be remembered. How happy we are when thought finally slows, petering out like a river in high summer. Photographs in which I appear and the ones who look at them now and think, I wonder what became of him. It's turtles and chalices all the way down, of this I am sure. Letter upon letter, poem upon poem, sentence upon sentence upon sentence. At night the stars whisper to me songs they've never sung to anyone. In the envelope I am, the screed I am. In the world of us, a single note carrying itself unwavering through eternity.