begin the body’s wick
the kidney-root of flame
muscular palimpsest my father’s
lips a memory of water
hold vigil around the bed
become garden
float and bless
life’s effort to lift
the dark helmet :
(a) he throbbed like a mountain range
(b) cold is a field of tulips somewhere in northern Washington
the sky empties of conviction
each downward stroke
a bony green frost
simultaneous char
there are waves we cannot
resist waves like God’s
fingernails dragged
across a veil :
(c) field of insects, sheen of eyes, field of frozen lightning
(d) o, petal, please defend the yellow, the red, the purple, the blue
see the son he was
the lineage of winds that made
refugee of his heart
hands folded now immune
to shadows in the corners
of his mind only velvet
tulips
thicken calcify knuckles
split at the seams walls
of the damage taken
apart :
(e) a smile is a perfectly tied shoelace, a black windbreaker
(f) with blue fleece collar the body pushes out
his salt in the bowl of my neck
newly formed
plateau on earth from one
absence
to another
what is weight what is human
but the blinking of tulips
around a small downed moon?
(g) both the skin of the egg and the hair caught in a bun are efforts
(h) to bind memory
father my head, we are
twin fruits gnarled into one
the neck our pulses
beat in battle
mother a mesh of nights is thrown
over your cheeks a country
which will not leave
my body :
(i) we are always approaching the edge of a foreign land
(j) we are no less afraid
of the sweetness left
for bees to redeem
stamen knuckles the dust
gathering force our love
this wind-bowed grass
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