The drift flames never forget
each evening a breeze
pushes the sun away and my stove
as moons approaching the horizon
still try to warm, arm in arm
walk the world home

--I hug this stove, dry its shadow
crawling useless through the flue
--even the wooden door 
is doomed, red paint
as a hide will tighten
under a footstep too close
and the edge bend
coil in everything's heart

--I carry that curl in my arms
where the coldest knock
still rises into steam

then falls sharper than roots
still disappear :my footsteps
each evening lifted
and under these logs
a fever floats away

--each log a kiss! and this stove
already a padlock
till even the floor can't move
and I close the flue
as you once turned a key

--I learned to lock the fire
till the dark flares up
as if it came from a star
that never forgot, that knocks

to come in, to cover this stove
and the world and every night
black, flat, dead.

This nest half calm, half stars, the air
almost white :morning
scares them, blows them back
till it's safe :at night

these eggs, as if nothing happened
--in that same artless formation
they are born with
and the mothering blue jay
without that heavy milk
as each volcano still nurses its child
born feeble, half frozen with feathers
that stir when I blow on them
and the dark from my breath.

These eggs thought it was night
was I turned my head to hear the ground 
being born :seeds calling out 
for the first time the cry 
they will boil forever
that these stars come back
without losing their way
without my arm covered with claws
and the small carcass
crumpled like my heart

--even a feather's too much
and this tree wailing under the weight
under a stone where egg
fell apart half way through the light.

How much more could this stone harden
as is my hand would not let go
and the branch on the calmest day
points to the ground
which it owns and more straw.






You see traces :this snow
from a madness in bees
and lilac --it's a game
asking each month to count backward
--only December remembers the sky green
songbird green
and nothing touching the ground.

Snow is new, unsure, left over
from a loose mist at last
condensed :the Earth still pulling down
more snow and the first dream
all those years airborne, fell

--it hates the ground, wants back the night
when December was the only word
for lightning not yet on the ground
and every dream since
hazy, wandering through dew
as if it almost remembers how to fly
to carry in its eyes 
the thunder once green, once December 

--it's a race but December 
is older than the world
and the world knows this, lets
the other months as geese
still circle the frozen pond
lift from this trap
only their vague reflection :six branches
all that's left from their feathers

--six shadows to remind the snow
how the flattening light
December alone had watched become 

the sun. --you can see the leaves 
the moths and that mirage whose breeze
was once your heart --the air
still makes a claim and you watch a word
become your lips and whisper

--how little air is left
and so much name, so much December
still green and flying.