My child is old as the stone
Which sank years ago into the earth

Though he still lies naked in my dreams
Though I say his name at dawn

My child is old as stone
This morning I walk the empty field

This morning I fill my mouth with dirt
From a hill gorged with bones

ALTER CALL

ALTER CALL

To ask it once & for all
& for all
the brains argued out

of the conversation.
To sleep
in a straight line
& never be outrage

revealed in a sneeze.
To mow,
to snip & prune
the growling in the distance,
Lord.

To live among the patient,
the forgiven,
striking a bell
four thousand times a day.
To never think
of one man

as all men.
But to loosen
the valve on each fury.
To alter
the arc of my grin,

my face,
on its wobbling
axis. Lord, a parasol
of Your Mercy.
To rise
in Your Manor, Lord.

In Your Manner.
Do I ask too much?
To know, truly,
what heals

all wounds. To rock the coffin
of Death & His concubines.
To gather the blue stones
of Imperfection, Lord.
& cast them away.

AUTUMN

AUTUMN

Because the leaves ache
& the rush-hour dusk begins
to thicken & slow,
in this, the season of your birth,

your skull’s music box begins
its few imperfect notes,
& one of your younger selves
heads North behind a teenaged couple
from the Catholic school,
behind the sway of the girl’s plaid skirt
& cape of black braids,
the boy’s loose, almost criminal strut—

you follow them through the traffic’s caesura,
through the lot of the boarded-up Rite Aid,
the fire station opposite the Burger King
& its jaded daydreaming workers,

its scent of cooling grease
like the scent you inhaled once
along the rim of a girl’s collar,
the untangling bun of her hair.

You leaned into each other
in the break room,
doubled in red & black aprons,
your large visors removed,
her tongue held like a moist wing
between your lips—
your foolish self,
your younger, better self,
the one you see in the couple’s
lanky, unpolished grace.

You call to them & the sound
of your voice is reduced to a murmur
as you wake in a dim blue room
beside your wife. You want to tell her,

with your whole self,
though the other selves remain
lost, loitering, in love,

how there is a taste
like regurgitated skin or perhaps feathers
in your mouth,
I have had a strange dream,
you want to say,

but because now you can only remember
that you were younger, heading North,
you think it was just a dream about age

& then, instead of waking her,
you, my backward-doubling little self,
awaken me.

THE SAME CITY

THE SAME CITY