Swan's Flight

She falls off the world,
slows the air- tight
in a breadth of compass
before it toes shadow.

My ache is high above
where she hangs--
unmakes me
on water drop breaths,
so they peel long tails
from unstemmed lips.

Still, she laughs waves
off her fallen wings
to hungry plates of glass
drifting too dull to break.

Return

My letters stiffen here, I
sit upon their frozen hinges,
scream across slippery sleep
where it stands over them.

I have let them live away
to love false and unmake
merry children, dear muse,
where unthreaded breath
cannot draw them up.

Prose is no friend to me,
for its fleeting victory I run
in its maze- it opens in me
straight rows of scars.