The moon is a sliver tonight,
or at least it looks it
through the buildings and the trees.

Planted, four, in a row
like towers on a grid,
I wonder if trees can love.

Threat of late Spring rain,
against the chalk scrawled blackboard,
shower of bullets.

Teachers throw bodies
splashing over stunned students
last lectures of love.

My parents loved each other but it’s unlikely no one was harmed
on the long, broad path to my conception, and as for fidelity,
my mitochondrial DNA is British all the way to the damsel
du chambre of Queen Philippa, born in Tonbridge Castle,
mother unknown, fathered by Edward’s ambidextrous favorite.

My sister held the baby as he died.
Not hers.

She held the nose-tube baby
as his mother exercised at the Y,
exorcized, for moments, grief,
setting fragile, ebbing boy in soft arms.

It will take your breath,
the endless wall,
but you will call again.
Lean out, plant the feet:
cinch of gravity at the waist,
below the wash, the rapid.

look into my orchid eye
and I’ll tell you a story about psilocybin sex,
how to melt into another
with full chimera absorption.

honeycombed echo’s of deep earth
as red sandstone soil covered
buried treasure