Sun behind the old

oak. A beak against the bark;

below it, a squeak.

The myth of the primitive heart:

love took refuge in the heart's ruins.

In the midst of two pulses synchronizing,

one slowed to a stop.

“What’s poetry to

you?” “Remembering a voice

from your childhood.”

Last night fossilized

into the driveway, I walk

still in your breath.

Listen for the last

clap of thunder—a thousand

birds will rise from ash.

When night fell, she thought herself up.

Thunder rumbles my

eardrums, leaving my hive of

a brain shaken mad.

The ghost who mourns for

me says, "You are all the lives

I'd live except one."

From the blackness, the

stars will speak, "Tame the night and

half the world is yours."