July wildfire sonnets
Deeply modern concepts:
pause and repetition,
how sewn-together stitches
across a seam are offset.
Febrile, tense, and clustered,
as it happens I know of love.
That is to say of blood
and how to speak when flustered.
Bach, I think, is modern,
how once it was just counted
now nightly covers flowers
so they’ll open up then shutter.
--
Safety or purpose?
Hopefully no one heard us
carry on like we did,
almost, as if, with urgence.
Alcoholic moon.
A firefly, I noticed,
has landed on my rooftop
and accordingly was brewed.
We’re young, full of mistakes,
full of hurting power.
Hurt will have its hour
but youth will show what risks take.
--
Instead of knowing, words come.
Instead of being, reasons.
Why has youth chose me then
to first be born then hesitate?
Ease is like a lever
and reason is its center:
the lever balanced on the ground
with the fulcrum taken out.
Youth and ease, proportionate
in one another, still.
Inside of one, our claims will fit,
but in the other, death will.
--
Deep, dark, frogs,
cool and brined, will pause
when I approach
the pond, even alone.
July came, these wild-
fires dampen simul-
taneously the piles
and, from the shore, my iris.
It was juicy, then black,
fitted with their sacks
of silty air now contracting:
croak and peep. My heart is quiet.