Aestuum

"Normal is a myth" she said to me
on the toilet, smoking a cigarette
drinking beer and I

wandered out from inside,
the milky way above us, a comforter
in cooled October, colder autumn.

Normal is dew on the benches
and cigarette butts, and talk
of not smoking or drinking.

Normal is the memory
of your belly button under
my tongue, your hair

in my fist, the whispers
of come here, come
with me, and we

watched the mist
do its magic, listened
to clouds ghost &

disappear to reappear
between wind and birdsong.
So come to me undone

buttons unsnapped
and the questions you've
waited for unanswered.

Remembering Jean Paul

Night has no place
for robes or amulets
on the sidewalks
near your bridge

we rushed under,
our ruckled laughter
sacrament for
your suicide, of
last long year

when they found
you downriver
with duckseed
in your hair,
the jewel alive
on the dead.

Tonight
there is mist for
an orange night,
sweet dew on
park benches &
car lights pass
by, going home.

Friendship, or Bees Of The Invisible
(after Rilke)

Where there are no forks on the mountain up
or down there is sunlight that leaps between

leaf-cover and trees undressing for winter.
Here on Black Rock we photograph your heartsong,

torn books, the rare-earth art safe from frost-
line above us and below. It is more than home

when fingers turn online splines from their cold
ratchets into the venules of laughter & applause.

Here we hit the road and arrive under starlight
to follow paths that have settled into their own

sense of what goes where.