the color yellow has its moment
indoors against blue / the one
that always ends up stealing time
and falling / in the valley
between two lakes

two moments / two firsts
two words merge
Glengary remains the saddest name
in a swirl of them
trapped beneath

the Long Room will always slay
the real demons I see
in the oldest wood grain
in the skewed photo I choose
to take away / let’s raise another roof

another April washes away
letters no longer blurred
into a sloppy slope slipping
to a concrete floor
all that racket about a roadhouse

on the edge of the best little city
I almost never got to know

high top bar tables still distract me
that helping hand
could no longer reach mine
Notre Dame was burning
I did nothing

I prop you up like a seagull
at night / water shushing
the shore even darker
I loved you into that morning
left you beneath the dock’s disaster

not every you is an old lover
not every month holds a day
that reduces me to tears
not every true love
is a person / there’s the place

where I belong / outlier reaching
toward a root
those underground trees
are merely protecting themselves
from the next flame

buoy bells sound off / a distance
measured and forgotten / as preteens
we dive off a broken pier / not caring
which hurricane / ‘38 or ‘54
gave us this break

I will never grow your dandelion hair
see you through his butterfly eyes
you two see my scars
I put my insect life
in your hands

doesn’t anyone else see the irony
in how Tesla died

wood ducks perch
on a dead tree branch
casting a shadow over the pond
the way I wish I could witness the world
without this numbing anxiety

aren’t we all accidents
the result of an elaborate
egg dumping ruse
no one has quite figured out
a nest bursting at the seams

another retreat into pages
turned by dandelion fingers
after the rain on the first day of May
I slip my panic into a box
to place on a shelf within reach