He went to bed that night
having seen the hurt in her eyes,
having turned away from the asking hands,
having averted the gaze of the pleading throng,
having nothing but the short breathing in his mortal frame
and yet somehow he slept well that night.
In the midst of all his half-becomings he slept well.

How does it happen?
The shift through time and space
when the street hawkers and lazy cuckoos
of ages gone by
can slip into the pockets of present perception
and make their smell known.
The light flicker of a dusty road impinges
on the waking moments of my older self
when the breath of painfully lost worlds
slides quietly into my lungs.
The universe sleeps at odds with itself tonight
and I dream of somewhere else.

I savored that Sunday,
when I stood hunched over the bare bones of the world
and racked the ribs with rhythms and chimes
and sang songs in the rings of grass
that graced the traces of the doe through the day.
And I have seen the green of the pine tips
and the cold stares of broken bare branches
that scarce withstood the fiery bloodletting.
I could have throw myself off the shelf
of stone and into the overgrown vales
and everything pales in the tales I tell.