Losing My Hedge

1.

The first and second time,

the wind blew and your hair

wandered into your mouth.

Those times, all things

considered, the sun was still

warm, and you, ready to pounce

who and what, not me.

Third time: sat across from me,

a little to the left, back

hunched, almost a crouch,

spoke curses and ill;

left a sweet taste in my mouth.

2.

We are the sick ones;

pebbles on our tongues and guns

under their chins, darling.

We are the predators;

forcing the blessings and favors

to save us from them, darling.

Write us in the books

among the saviors and crooks

because they are the ill ones, darling.

biennial bears fruits

Murray and Etheline: growing
up the walls and throwing out
the life, dear love, that soaks in my
hair and beads on your neck.

Murray and Etheline: growing
orange flared trumpets, feed the flies
and bees – lies
and creeds – that, dear friend, you bleed
when you bleed and bruise
when you bruise.

'Urray and Metheline rally for the sun
as much as the shade. They barter
for water, drink it
in their souls and spit it
in our books.

Dear loves, hold us in your happys and sads
and include us
in your talks, 'cause we give not enough
of what we should
but want to die
as if we did.

Murray and Etheline: afraid
that the spider
barreling through the rain
drops will learn that they know. Keep still
when the sun and moon sound them. Sit
at our table, dear, and choose to keep
the secrets
the Fates commanded –

the heart and soul we gave them
to keep from each other.

patterns in sign language

Take the flowers the ground
gives you.

Little girl says thank you
to the dirt – gestures with her hand
from her mouth. Twice.

She throws kisses –
fingers from her lips then tosses them
into the breeze – goes wherever
the breeze takes them.

She gathers the pinks and petals in her arms
against her kid belly and

it's like a fever: warmth
behind my eyes and in my chest
well to tears in the ducts
grows to weak in my joints and itch
in my ears that can be fixed by numbing but is still
sensation and sensation's

absence.
The fever won't be gone because I want to feel it because it's a feeling because I feel it because I caught both unintended kisses because I saw them because I felt them.

It patterns like the kisses children blow
without mean to, like the deafness and fever
that grow because they started
for reasons less magical than the lies,

like flowers grow and little girls pick them.

this is it