Two Windflowers Under the Lights

Speak to me in the language where the word “love” is at home.

Love me a free country.

Every language has a homeland. I don’t need

whole continents. Just your two arms. Just you.

Illumination at 4AM

The narrow sound of a barn on fire

woke me to the window

where I watched the roof collapse through

before I woke you.

There was time to ask five questions

of the fire before the sirens came.

How modern. The kitchen blank

where I stood wearing clothes

while you ran out into the night

—underwear only—

ran until you realized it was just a barn. No people.

The miscarriage ghosted my vision

a narrow pain burned up and through

watching you. That’s how far a father forgets himself

—you would have made such a good one—

half-asleep, you ran toward the blaze.

The Ridge

Wind teaches the snow

to blow open the front door

in the night. Mad, you wake to close.

When we make the air hot

to cut the cold, it burns the world

cloudy. That’s the back-end.

Handle it. Test the yellow leaves

for burns. Flowers grow from ash

but they will not grow from snow.

Stone could go either way.

Most stones are signs.

The pimple in the crease

of my nose, (of all the things

my hands will do today,

the most difficult

will be teaching myself not to touch it.)

All day our proximity is wrong.

My hands lack the functionality

to touch you. I see your radar screens

and there are radio communications

all night between us while we sleep.

The front door of my heart is blown open

and you have snowed in. We live here.

When it gets too intense

you wake up and close the door.

There’s a ridge on the edge of the city. You used

to walk the railroad tracks up there,

tracks without a train. In metal and in memory.

The dining car. The chapel.

If the train wakes up, I will roll down the side of the ridge,

here, let me show you. Under the snow sleeps the burned leaves,

the old metal, the first time you fell.