After a Shooting
You’ve noticed? For each death
we make a circle, a lei of our hearts
strung on memory’s thread, and we stand
that way in the time—wind awhile,
around the exited flesh
or fire or ash or emptiness,
where the mad gray moth has eaten
its hole in the cloth. Seemed sudden,
yes, but each loss was hatched
in the dust of a troubled past
we hadn’t seen. Then there’s a song,
then we talk—our words shuttle
across the warp of the absence. Out of these
frayed selves, we mend the weave.
Night Sky
I, emptiness holding the stars,
I lean down under your moon
your clouds and the tree boughs
around you—your irises open
as if you could take me in. Well,
you are of some interest, given
the limitless reflections I sense
in those folds back of your lenses.
You, tiny live-and-die wonderer
tilting your bobbly turret to see
in the dark of me what it is
to be boundless, I’ll give you this—
a few more breaths of witness,
then it’s the sieve, my kiss.