in the darkest of caves
illuminated by night
i sought answers in your shape
you sought refuge in mine.

it was lust, masked as love
the highs, worth the lows
you were broken
mysterious
destructive
light.

How unremarkable we were
in our little unities
and stubborn alliances
How little we were
in our shadowed complaints
and broken pencils
And home was the roof
where we blew smoke up to the gods we never knew

Weary sun sighs deeply.
Rattlesnakes seek solace.
Tumbleweeds bleed wisdom.
Saguaro reach deep into green pockets
of scattered water loose
in rancid blankets of arid certainty.
Scorpions seethe, swallowing sand,
each and every granule
a microcosm of the infinite.

When she delivered him, occipito posterior, the back
of his skull cradled against her sacrum,
when he crowned, face up, chin up,
it was her father’s chin, her father’s
nose, his broad strong Scotish countenance.
My father was there, wearing a hospital mask, ear to ear,
stretched across his face like a sheet spread at birth,
she would say later it was the first time
she’d seen him cry, her husband.

We are projections on a sheet in the yard,
suspicious spools of film liberated from metal cans.
When there is nothing left to play, the children retreat
to flashlight tag, and the women refresh their wine.

The men huddle in the darkness.
Someone is talking about the circus,

It came rustling through the mangrove forest
howler monkeys with their megaphone voices
heard long before seen swinging through trees
on sweltering Costa Rica mornings

the pacific surf came rolling
sometimes pounding and sometimes
playfully lapping the black volcanic sands