08/22/2018

I am thinking this morning
of all the bridges I burned
in this short life—the human ones
of course: in the heart’s warehouse
of regrets bricks and steel float
like feathers but words sing
like dropped anvils, piercing
calls, like those of lost hawks.
our hearts, I think, are more
readily made to forgive others
than ourselves; the dead don’t come
back in familiar form
they wear new masks but speak
old words we should recognize but
too often don’t. if only we were like
the trees: in death giving back all
to whatever we had choked
and shaded the light out of
a green laughter running over our
toppled backs.