From the entrance
to a moonlight gazebo,
she asks the first star she sees:

“Why won’t you become hyper
text like everything
beneath you?”

It’s been so long since
she’s given herself permission
to go outside after dark,

she forgets how delicate,
how vast,
the response.

A mile from the First Avenue walls
of stars, she can almost hear
a stray song flinch

as it gets linked
to its roots in the holler
where there’s still a twinkle in his eye.

First mounds
of dirt one day,
suddenly the next week,
a thickening of the urban
forest.

Inside
my beloved park,
socially distanced rows
of Sargent cherry saplings line
the path

I take
each morning and
afternoon to stretch my
legs, trying to reduce the stress
of now.

It’s here—
my favorite
season in a shitty
year. Why does everything I
touch turn

inside
out? Even the
story of the young white
walnut planted off to the side.
Even

trees die.
Especially
trees. Damn the emerald
ash borer, damn us, and damn this
climate

ruin.
Gasping for air,
I gently press fingers
against the trunk in search of its
promise.

Forget
the banks, between
two bridges, down dirt-caked
wooden steps, a white-sanded beach
appears.

Welcome
to the river’s
shore—covered in feathers,
charred driftwood, dunes, graffiti on
concrete.

Try not
to crush the leaf
you gather from the ground—
an early gift from the maple
uphill.

Press its
already turned
veined redness between two
pages of a dictionary
and pray

it will
absorb meaning
as frost coats the wooden
deck to the pedestrian bridge
at dawn.

These irregular heartbeats.
This day’s anxiety
will subside just in time
for tomorrow’s to kick in.

To be so lucky
to have a kitchen
with a sink drain
that clogs,

a job
with a neverending stream
of crazy deadlines
to meet,

to have a city
neighborhood park
to negotiate threats
of theft in.

Or, are they rumors?

To be all alone
in an apartment
without new images
to trap on paper with ink.

To be so lucky
to have a heart,
to be able to breathe,
to live through it.

When one
thousand pairs of
wings get trapped in the beams
of searchlights, or one crashes to
the ground,

signs of
confusion, it’s
time to pause for twenty
moments to release us to the
darkness.

No one
wants more death to
further scar this date. Cries
fill the night. Please help me find my
way home.

Red, red
wine—drug of choice
till choosing had nothing
to do with it, empties clanking
below

his feet.
Which version do
you sing in the shower
when you want to forget the year
engraved

above
your left hip? Neil?
Paul? The tattoo exposed
your expiration date to him
and all

the young
barflies. The day
you left New York for good
(July 27, 1990)
or bad.

Her hips
expose limits.
Ragweed pollen on red
alert. Ambrosia not her drug
of choice.

All my
old addictions
wave to me as I go
round on a hand-painted steed. No
brass ring.

The trees
scream at her as
she turns to scream louder
at the written words she cannot
escape.

To keep
us from catching
anything, they are closed
for the season. Memories turn
to rust.

I use
the third person
to distance ourselves from
the Wurlitzer organ as it
plays on.

funnel
cloud | old picnic
tables | salvaging wood
from barn doors | ride of the decade
so far

Who cares
about the shoes,
the dress you wore that night
under a moonless sky before
it rained.

Ducklings
waterproof their
feathers before they swim
across the pond. My reflection
would sink.

The song
of another
bird on another day
plays in my head on repeat. Can’t
mute it.

Liquid
lullabies lure
the lace from the hem line.
Who knows where the bulrushes will
go next.

Back to
that dress you wore
so well. What can I say
to convince you it’s great to be
alive?