On Becoming Light
And there it was, the moth;
a child’s hand wrestling itself in the grass.
Delirious, it fumbled its way out
from the black umbrella of a tree,
then landed on the stoop.
A frayed rope of light swung from the porch.
The moon was gorged on the dewy foment
of summer.
I set my hand near. It fluttered into my palm,
its weight no more than breath; its wings,
laments hammered into sheets of dust.
The world stalled on its axis, I could hear
the ocean in my bones, the night
nervous with cicadas from years ago.
It pulsed once toward the brightness:
Impossible, that we must love what kills us.
I held my hand high to the light until it flew.
from Crows
What they want are more gravestones to topple,
frost to whet their blighted voices.
They’d have me believe my bones
were exhumed from the rubble of Warsaw,
that I was assembled from a nest of razor wire.
At night I hear them prying nails from the floorboards
with the grappling hooks of their feet,
dragging our house god knows where.
