Consonance

the consonance of rain that calms

a convulsive river                                like how

a warm hand settles shuddering grief

                                    a form of translation

the borrowed light of the moon

gives it its lost look

its one stone face

                                    eyeless             sober

                        fluttering over us tonight

helicopters shuttle between the collapsed flow

of the highway and the hospital

            their insipid music drowns the barking

of a red fox dying hidden in the cornfield

                                    in the periodic silences

I hear the plea weaken and cease.

Wingless

it is raining and the soot

thickens where it does not flow

charred and clotted wings

dislocate from my blistered back

wingless           I am rooted

                        vulnerable

by daybreak I will be found

and then recognized

but should the rain lengthen the night

or if a cave open into another dream

something to come next as

the way back has been lost.

Confinement

we are confined by our bodies and if

the mystics are correct

                        that the body is in

                                    the soul

            then what

when I say I want to touch you I mean

I want to reach inside you to where you are

what you are                            I mean

I want to escape myself

                        to shudder and scream

the agony of the earth that we call gravity

shudder and scream like mothers

who have lost sons to war        to oceans

                                    to the mystery

                        to love even

I want to touch you     to reach inside myself

to touch that quivering human confined

            in this sorrowful animal body.