While the Trees Run their Roots

these nights are the ones

i feel i'm going to die

not for despair but for a bursting heart

the trees seem happier

or at least

settling into themselves

retreated to a place I can't go

but one I've named in myself

happy for their digging,

for their search

for the dark they're enjoying,

I dance at their feet while they're gone

Home in the Head Frames

Stewing on the northwest corner of Butte, Montana, just north of the Highlands Range, is the Berkeley Pit, a sprawling strip mining caldron half filled by an uninhabitable lake that my friend Colin points at in the early morning dark and says, "this is why I can't be confident in my drinking water." 

Our tread was better than a stumble and softer than a tromp, yet definitely not possessing of all the coordination of sober people. Fireball is a Canadian-whiskey based liqueur that punches of candied cinnamon like little kids' Atomic sweets by the same name.  Turns out, Butte drinks it like Denver shoots Jameson, like D.C. bartenders gulp Grand Marnier, and it's well chased by Milwaukee's blue ribbon wearer of 1844.  Butte welcomed us generously.

Writ into Bone and Mouth

his nakedness near the wide window
all honesty and long relief
this is the first the world stretches
for him
it trembles pulled taught and
free on its back,
just as she'd been minutes ago
this is summer afternoon
newness
shed skins on the floor
toast to new tastes
and having no answer for 'why would we wait for this'
understanding writ into bone and mouth
in this, the After, the sun finishes
on his opened chest what her mouth started there
 

Wandering Back

i am wandering back to him
embarrassed that i lost his hand

i know its strange
but i miss my friend

The Leaning

i found what shattered 
after them 
under those exposed 
beams, in the bay window room 
they'd pacted to face 
one another

Jack Gilbert

he is in the same space
whether or not
the room is worth a trip for anyone
i can't see anymore
but
he is in the same space